**Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies** An International Multidisciplinary Series

# Anders Sevelsted Jonas Toubøl  *Editors*

# The Power of Morality in Movements

Civic Engagement in Climate Justice, Human Rights, and Democracy

# **Nonproft and Civil Society Studies**

# An International Multidisciplinary Series

#### **Series Editors**

Paul Dekker, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands, Lehn Benjamin, Purdue University Indianapolis Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN, USA Research on the nonproft sector and civil society has gained momentum in recent years. Whereas interest in the institutional arena located between the state and the market remained a small specialty feld until the late 1980s, since that time it has become a growth area. Research and funding opportunities have multiplied, as has the number of scholars and practitioners taking part in the development of a broad and ambitious agenda across the major social science disciplines.

This series publishes books of interest to a wide-ranging audience of researchers, advanced students, policymakers, and practitioners in this international area of study and practice.

Anders Sevelsted • Jonas Toubøl Editors

# The Power of Morality in Movements

Civic Engagement in Climate Justice, Human Rights, and Democracy

*Editors* Anders Sevelsted Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy Copenhagen Business School Frederiksberg, Denmark

Jonas Toubøl Department of Sociology University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark

This book is an open access publication.

ISSN 1568-2579 Nonproft and Civil Society Studies ISBN 978-3-030-98797-8 ISBN 978-3-030-98798-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98798-5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2023

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# **Preface**

This book project emerged from the Movements and Morality conference which took place at Copenhagen Business School, May 28–29, 2019. Without the CISTAS project providing funding and support to two junior scholars', admittedly, somewhat vague idea that juxtapositioning the concepts of movement and morality could foster important ideas and empirical studies, neither the conference, nor this book would have become reality. We are therefore grateful to Liv Egholm Feldt and Lars Bo Kaspersen whose advice and support were vital to the realization of the Movements and Morality conference. Likewise, we are grateful for the fnancial support we have received from Carlsberg Foundation1 .

We also want to thank both presenters and participants who engaged in fertile and stimulating discussions at the conference. Their comments and ideas shaped the overall book project and the bulk of the chapters, which build on papers presented at the conference, just as they have energized and fueled our commitment to undertaking the task of editing the volume.

Last but not least, we are extremely grateful to the authors who have contributed to the book. We have enjoyed stimulating dialogs and exchanges with each and every one of you, at individual level in the mailbox and at our internal author seminar. These discussions have been instrumental in shaping the framing of what this book was about and how it contributes to the felds of political sociology, social movement, and civil society studies. The collaborative process of writing and editing this book has in itself been a realization of the original aim of the project, namely to provide an open-ended, creative process of exploring the intrinsic and multidimensional relationship between morality and social movements.

Frederiksberg, Denmark Anders Sevelsted Copenhagen, Denmark Jonas Toubøl December 10th, 2022

<sup>1</sup>This book is part of the Carlsberg Foundation research projects *The moral elites* (CF17-0386. PI: Anders Sevelsted) and *Mobilization in the era of social media: Introducing the decisive role of group level factors* (CF17-0199. PI: Jonas Toubøl).

# **Contents**

#### **Part I Introduction**





# **Contributors**

**Jeffrey Alexander** Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

**Nina Eliasoph** University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

**Eva Fernández G. G.** Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

**Peter Gundelach** University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

**Sara Kalm** Department of Political Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

**Troels Krarup** Technical University of Denmark—DTU, Copenhagen, Denmark

**Jun Liu** Center for Tracking and Society & Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

**Doug McAdam** Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA

**Anna Meeuwisse** School of Social Work (Meeuwisse), Lund University, Lund, Sweden

**Gian-Andrea Monsch** University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

**Gritt B. Nielsen** Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark

**Florence Passy** University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

**Anders Sevelsted** Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

School of Social Work, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

**Eva Svatoňová** Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

**Jonas Toubøl** Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

**Sophia Wathne** Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy

# **Part I Introduction**

# **Chapter 1 Introduction: Movements and Morality**

**Anders Sevelsted and Jonas Toubøl**

**Abstract** The introductory chapter argues why there is a need for a book on movements and morality and how this volume meets this need. It introduces the twofold purpose of the book: insights into the moral foundations of current civic struggles and political conficts and developing theoretical, empirical, and methodological approaches to studying morality in movements. Then a review of the development of the feld of social movement research reveals how morality is treated fragmentarily, which leads to a discussion of the terminological tempest of morality and an introduction of the three moral dimensions that structure the book: *selves in interaction*, *rationalization and justifcation*, and *culture and tradition*. The contributions to the volume are introduced according to these three dimensions, and a fnal section points to the methodological creativity and diversity that characterizes the volume, attesting to the fruitfulness of a research agenda centered on movements and morality.

**Keywords** Social movements · Morality

Around the globe, social movements are appealing to moral principles as they engage in contentious struggles related to three sets of global crises concerning the (1) ecological system and climate changes, (2) global and local economic injustices, and (3) democracy and human rights. Climate justice activists appeal to humanity's moral duty to save its own as well as the planet's future. At the same time, the struggle for fair distribution of resources between the Global South and Global

A. Sevelsted

J. Toubøl (\*)

Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

School of Social Work, Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: ase.mpp@cbs.dk

Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: jt@soc.ku.dk

A. Sevelsted, J. Toubøl (eds.), *The Power of Morality in Movements*, Nonproft and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98798-5\_1

North intensifes, faced with the unequal distribution of threats from climate changes and global pandemics like COVID-19. Moral dilemmas over property and distribution continue to drive contention and mobilization around the economic system regulation, targeting the morally corrupt and greedy fnanciers responsible for the 2008 crash of the fnancial markets and the politicians unwilling to implement necessary regulation. With increasing intensity, we witness clashes between pro- and anti-abortion activists in Argentina, Poland, the USA, and elsewhere, struggling over the defnition of human life and women's rights to their bodies. Pro-democratic protesters in places like Myanmar, Belarus, Hong Kong, and Russia demand political rights based on the modern ideal of the moral integrity of the human individual. Similarly, the fundamental moral principle of the sacredness of human individuals informs pro-immigrant and refugee rights activists' struggle alongside refugees on migration routes to safe-havens. Here, nationalist and xenophobic anti-immigrant movements base their claims on strongly held moral convictions about society's dependence on the integrity of the nation. Recently, moral outrage over lost privileges based in racial and colonial hierarchies and white nationalism fueled the January 2021 Capitol Hill insurrection, directly attacking the world's oldest existing democracy.

Despite the diversity of issues, these movements all question society's moral and ethical foundations, whether it be the justice and fairness of our economic system, our democratic institutions and basic human rights, or our relation to and place in nature. Despite very different constituencies, their participants are all partly driven by moral and ethical concerns related to the future of our societies. In most cases, activists do not merely protest but envision and practice new moral principles in anticipation of what they see as necessary changes in our lifestyle and society's institutions in order to overcome the challenges posed by the threefold set of crises confronting humanity and the globe. This is true for current social movements as well as for movements of the past; students of social movements generally agree that social movements are both prisms of society's value conficts, and, in their capacity as formulators of new moral visions, they also constitute central actors in the development of the society's moral order (McAdam, 1988; Alexander, 2006; Joas, 2013). Thus, in order to grasp the political struggles of our time and history, which have shaped who we are and who we will become, we must study the link between morality and social movements.

This book aims to do just that. It presents a collection of contributions that all investigate how morality and movements are related. The purpose is twofold. On the one hand, the individual contributions offer valuable and timely insights into the moral foundations of current civic struggles and political conficts. Thus, it offers commentary and analyses of current events. On the other hand, it explores and develops theoretical, empirical, and methodological approaches to studying and specifying the phenomenon and concept of morality in movements. In that respect, it also constitutes an academic and scientifc contribution setting out a new research agenda.

Finally, the contributions in the volume also exemplify the tension between facts and norms that continue to irritate the social sciences productively. All of social science, but especially students of social movements, must be acutely aware of the

challenge of double hermeneutics and of being in society while describing society as if from the outside. Scholars may work from the epistemological stance that values merely enter into research processes to guide researchers in their choice of topic or as a research subject (Weber, 1949a [1904], Weber, 1949b [1917]); they may believe that the purpose of social science is inherently emancipatory (Habermas, 1968); or, more radically, they may hold that all knowledge production is inescapably interested and value-laden (Foucault, 1998). Nonetheless, the tension between facts and values, description and judgment, remains inescapable and continues to provoke new answers (Gorski, 2013). This contribution aims not to explicate or provide answers to these epistemological questions but to take the fact/value tension as a precondition that is present in each chapter's theory, operationalization, and methods, in which the reader will encounter all of the aforementioned epistemological stances. Similarly, the tension is productively present across the different chapters as they deal with movements traditionally thought of in terms of "progressive" or "reactionary."

## *Morality* **in the Movement Literature**

All movements and activists must mobilize moral outcry over injustices, and they must master the delicate act of fueling moral indignation while not falling into radicalization and marginalization on the one hand or becoming mainstream on the other, if they are to persist and optimize infuence on the development of societies' moral order (Olesen, 2018; Della Porta, 2018; Giugni, 1998; Gamson, 1975). In doing this, they frame their claims as morally superior and justifable toward their constituency and other political actors (Snow et al., 1986). At the same time, internally, meaning-making helps create, sustain, and negotiate collective identities, providing common moral ground that may motivate protest (Melucci, 1989; Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003; Lichterman & Dasgupta, 2020) as well as political altruism and solidarity activism on behalf of individuals who are perceived as victims according to the moral order of the group's culture (Tilly, 2001; Giugni & Passy, 2001; Passy, 2013). In light of its centrality in these processes, it is odd that the concept of morality rarely fgures centrally in contemporary scholarship on movements. It is hardly ever treated systematically. This is not only odd from the perspective of its centrality to the processes summarized above and the initial list of morally invested social movements and struggles dominating contemporary politics on the streets as well as inside the houses of parliaments but also in light of where the feld of social movement studies came from.

When the feld of social movement studies emerged during the 1970s and 1980s, different tendencies dominated on each side of the Atlantic. On both sides, the view of social movements and extra-institutional protest and politics as something irrational was sharply rejected. However, in the US tradition, the question of values and morality was more or less abandoned to begin with, and, to the extent that it has since been dealt with, it has mainly been in its capacity for explaining mobilization processes in the form of framing (Gamson, 1975; Snow et al., 1986), narratives (Polletta, 1998; Ganz, 2009), and cultural factors (Jasper & Poulsen, 1995; Flam & King, 2005). In Europe, the new social movement tradition generalized and reformulated the Marxist view of social movements as the central actor in societal confict. Thus, the movement would both emerge as the result of conficts and tensions in the society's moral order (Touraine, 1974; Habermas, 1975; Habermas, 1984a; Habermas, 1984b) and formulate the moral identities and principles of the new order in the making (Melucci, 1989). However, for various reasons not central to the argument in this chapter, the program of the new social movement tradition was largely abandoned by the following generations.

With a few notable exceptions that we shall treat in more detail in the second chapter of this volume, in the contemporary feld of social movement studies, morality is treated fragmentarily. When theorized, it is often in an auxiliary form not ascribing it a clear role as a cause, outcome, or consequence of social movement activity. Thus, the feld seems to have lost something important, which has recently been decried by observers with whom we agree (McAdam & Boudet, 2012; Walder, 2009; Tilly, 1998). This volume aims to explore and rediscover the centrality of morality to social movements and bring the concept back into the conversation.

## **Morality: A Terminological Tempest**

To social scientists who crave stable conceptual paradigms, moral philosophical concepts can seem to create a terminological tempest. Terms like norms, values, morals, ethics, etc. are often used interchangeably or at least with fuzzy boundaries, even in the feld of sociology of morality (Abend, 2008; Hitlin 2010; Hitlin & Vaisey, 2010). In this volume, we use morality as a hypernym or umbrella term for the plethora of concepts that denote *what we ought to do*. *The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy* tells us that "the morality of people and their ethics amount to the same thing" (Blackburn, 2016). Etymologically, one could argue that the only difference between the two is that one is derived from Ancient Greek and the other from Latin. Among social scientists, there has been a tradition of reserving the concept of *morality* for institutionalized prescriptions for behavior (in law or norms), while *ethics* is reserved for everyday practices and subjective refections on morality (Habermas 1984). *Norms* and *values* constitute a much-used distinction in the social sciences where norm refers to "a rule for behavior, or a defnite pattern of behavior, departure from which renders a person liable to some kind of censure" (Blackburn, 2016), i.e., an external societal regulation of behavior. Recognizing something as valuable is "to be inclined to advance it as a consideration in infuencing choice and guiding oneself and others" (Blackburn, 2016). Thus, values often refer to the subjective dimension of morality. *Legitimacy*, the beliefs on which the conviction that a political system should be obeyed rests (Weber, 1964), is another central dimension of morality in the social sciences. As we will see in Chap. 2, social movement theorists have used a number of concepts that denote some aspect of morality: *collective identity* (in-group self-perception), *scene styles* (patterned behaviors in settings), *political altruism* (disinterested concern for the welfare of others), *frames* (interpretive orientations that organize experience and guide action), and *moral shocks* (an emotional process that encourages participation).

All of these concepts have varying and overlapping meanings. In this volume, each author will defne their own concepts, but, as a point of departure, we develop three dimensions of morality intended to capture crucial aspects of morality. They also serve to structure the book (see Chap. 2): *selves in interaction* originates in Hume's conceptualization of morality as socially mediated experiences of sympathy. It concerns questions about how moral ideas motivate action, individual- or group-level interpretation, and meaning-making, how moral agents act creatively to change norms of society, or how individual and collective selves change their moral outlooks as part of a process of mobilization. *Rationalization and justifcation* stems from Kant's interpretation of moral duty as acting in accordance with a universal law. This dimension addresses the Enlightenment tradition of social research, and its critics, and covers issues of framing, dialogue and negotiation of principles, and justifcation and valuation practices in movements. Conversely, *culture and tradition* is derived from Hegel's notion that ethical life is dependent on recognition by a community. It focuses on how emotions, narratives, and everyday moral routines inform and underlie collective action. Movements may emerge from what is seen as a breach of culturally established norms and similarly work to change traditional ways of interpreting issues.

## **Conceptualizing Morality in Movements in Three Dimensions**

The contributions in this book all demonstrate the continued relevance of morality to all aspects of social movements, the spanning internal negotiations over strategy and identity, the process of mobilization, as well as the historical impact of movements and their relation to moral battles of their time.

The book is divided into three parts according to the three dimensions of morality as well as an introductory part that expands on the themes laid out in this introduction. The second chapter of the introductory part "Paradigm Lost? Three Central Dimensions of Morality to the Study of Social Movements" by Sevelsted and Toubøl argues that, while the concept of morality is only treated in a fragmented way in the feld of social movement studies, there is a rich heritage in moral philosophy, classical sociology, as well as classical movement research that may inspire present-day researchers. The authors undertake a review and critique of the feld and conduct a genealogy in order to trace and tease out the three dimensions of morality introduced in the present chapter.

In the following chapter, three seminal scholars in the feld of social movements, representing distinct approaches to movements and civic action—Jeffrey Alexander, Nina Eliasoph, and Doug McAdam—offer their refections on the role of morality in the study of movements and civil society as well as its relevance to understanding current movements and protest events. They share the volume's diagnosis of the state of social movement research as they regret the lack of focus on morality. Social movement researchers have been right to reject earlier interpretations of collective action as dysfunctional, deviant, and irrational behavior rooted in emotion. However, they have overcompensated and veered off in a structural and rationalist direction that has left questions of emotions, culture, and indeed morality as auxiliary. One main reason for this state of affairs, as pointed out by McAdam, is the fact that the feld of movement studies has become increasingly specialized and thus isolated from the broader question of societal moral change. Where morality *is* treated in the study of movements, it is done with a focus on formal structures and mechanisms rather than content and processes. Moreover, morality tends to become reifed, and the morality in question is often poorly defned.

In the *selves in interaction* part of the book, the heritage from Hume is felt in the way the authors conceptualize how morality enters into processes of interpretation and meaning-making, creative action, and processes of mobilization and how morality may emerge in and shape collective creative processes based on experiences of the other, of exhilaration or degradation—themes that clearly could inspire movement research agendas.

Advancing a novel relational understanding of values' relationship to action, Eva Fernández G. G. (Chap. 4) investigates how universalistic value orientations as well as normative and relational orientations of care fuel political solidarity with refugees, showing the positive combined effect of universalistic value orientations and generalized moral commitments favoring refugee solidarity activism. Jonas Toubøl and Peter Gundelach (Chap. 5) explore the moral development of the activist selves by analyzing how values are activated in contexts of activism, implying interaction with political institutions and resulting in the activists developing new attitudes of trust in political institutions and political views of immigration policies. Finally, revealing the workings of the activist mind, Gian-Andrea Monsch and Florence Passy (Chap. 6) investigate how cultural toolkits at the individuals' disposal enable them to perform political altruism and environmental action. Central to the process is the synchronization of minds through conversation, creating a shared moral understanding of a better way to live together.

The conclusion is clear: at the aggregate level, it is shown how commitment to universalist values and embeddedness in generalized norms had a causal effect for individuals' proclivity for engagement in the refugee and climate movements; morality is a driver of mobilizations and activism, but, through forms of interaction in distinct situational social movements contexts, they also shape their participants' moral perspectives, values, and moral mindsets.

In the next section, processes of *rationalization and justifcation* of morality are explored in three original contributions. The Enlightenment tradition is felt in the authors' use of concepts such as framing, principles, justifcation processes, and valuation practices. While the Enlightenment tradition emphasizes the role of rational dialogue in social movements, at the same time, it continues to struggle with its "internal opposition" of post-colonial and -structuralist scholars who continuously point to the dark side of the Enlightenment heritage. Where the frst section focused on how interactional processes and social contexts, in ways that the actors are not necessarily aware of, infuence their moral mindsets, in this section focus shifts toward how social movement and civil society actors deliberately work on developing and justifying their political rationales. The Kantian heritage is operationalized by the contributors by testing the French pragmatist concept of justifcatory regimes, focusing on prefgurative practices as central to movements' espoused or enacted political philosophies, ethical practices that balance deontology, and virtue ethics in counter publics that nag and haunt dominant moralities, as well as through the concept of moral elites that integrate a movement's beliefs and values.

Bringing into social movement studies the scholarship on justifcation by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, Troels Krarup (Chap. 7) aims to reinvigorate the focus on morality in social movement studies by assessing its analytical usefulness in relation to civic engagements in local urban greenspaces. Sophia Wathne (Chap. 8) offers an ambitious theoretical argument that advances the critical tradition by arguing that prefgurative social movements should not only be studied as objects but also be considered creative sites of formulating and practicing normative political theory. In her study cognate to Wathne's agenda, Gritt B. Nielsen (Chap. 9) through detailed ethnography shows how student activism works as a site for exploration and formulation of profound moral and ethical dilemmas, organized around how to conceive of and engage with others across differences. She argues that micro-level negotiations of moral dilemmas are intrinsic to democratic deliberation because they raise questions of how to balance inclusion and exclusion, as well as the promotion of universal moral positions and a sensitivity to particular and locally embedded experiences and values. Finally, Anders Sevelsted (Chap. 10) uses social network analyses to study how the moral elite of the historical Danish temperance movement played a central role in framing the values of, and beliefs related to, the defnition of alcoholism, which in turn would diffuse through the movement and society.

The contributions make clear that while some forms of environmental activism do not seem to conform to theoretical predictions about justifcation regimes, across time and space, activists and movement elites alike do justify their endeavors by invoking moral principles. Foreshadowing Alexander's remarks in Chap. 3, these principles negotiate particularist and universalist principles, as student activists balance identity politics with deontological claims of universal equality and temperance leaders adapt scientifc belief frames into value frames from the Enlightenment tradition or traditional and revivalist Christianity.

The third dimension of morality, *culture and tradition*, is then investigated in four contributions. Based on a philosophical lineage originating with Hegel, the authors show how emotions, narratives, and everyday moral routines may inform collective action through symbolic performances and breach of culturally established norms and inherited cultural schemas. In this section, the legacy from Hegel is conceptualized most explicitly as recognition and specifcally misrecognition in relation to meta-values that provide a ground for movements' claims-making and evolution. Furthermore, morality in movements is conceptualized through the rebellious and disciplinary moral aspects of humor as well as moral panics and the politically contextual moral dimensions of emotions.

Specifcally, Eva Svatoňová (Chap. 11) conducts a fascinating study of the use of humor in far-right movements' communication of their moral beliefs and evaluations, employing visual analysis of internet memes. Staying online, Jun Liu (Chap. 12) breaks new ground as he investigates the use of emotions in moral communication and political participation on Weibo in relation to environmental disasters in China. He shows how a deliberative appropriation and management of moral dimensions in a repressive regime have shaped emotional expressions into different roles than in democratically governed societies. Finally, Sara Kalm and Anna Meeuwisse (Chap. 13) make a highly original contribution by adapting Axel Honneth's theory of recognition to a theoretical framework, enabling us to study the moral dimension of countermovements and applying it to the case of the antifeminist movements through the last century.

The contributions show how reactionary countermovements invoke the metavalues of love, equality, and achievement in order to argue their case. Movements, however, are not characterized simply by rational deliberation. As is shown in the volume, emotions, humor, and visual aesthetics embedded in certain inherited narratives are similarly central to mobilizing and claims-making. Pointing out folk devils and portraying them, as well as societal elites, humorously is a long-standing tradition in repressive societies and continues to be applied by the so-called antigender movements and other right-wing movements. In authoritarian contexts, moral content in social media is shown to be particularly effective in generating emotional expressions online among activists.

In the fnal concluding chapter, a research agenda is sketched by pointing to six lacunae in social movement literature that the present volume uncovers: a bias in focus on left-wing groups, the causal effects of morality, the relationship between social science and moral philosophy, morality and time, global diffusion of moral claims, and universalism and particularism.

# **Methods and Methodologies in the Study of Morality in Movements**

The contributors to this volume each demonstrate a high degree of creativity in their conceptualizations, methodological approaches, and analyses of their empirical phenomena. Studying a very diverse set of phenomena and problems with an equally diverse set of theories from very different traditions, the volume is an invitation for researchers across disciplines in social science and the humanities to join the effort of investigating morality in movements.

Methodologically, the contributions show that the research agenda on movements and morality is operationalizable in innovative research designs. Interestingly, the frst interactionist section of the book is the section that applies quantitative research methods the most in the contributions by Eva Fernández G.G., Jonas Toubøl and Peter Gundelach, and Florence Passy and Gian-Andrea Monsch (Chaps. 4–6). Here, the creative designs allow for tests of not only individuals and groups' value dispositions but also their embeddedness in contexts of group norms, movement practices, and movement internal processes of meaning-making. The section on rationalization and justifcation (Chaps. 7–10) offers innovative solutions to methodological problems such as how we can operationalize survey questions for theories that hold that justifcations take place in local settings where actors negotiate and weigh costs against principles. Many of the contributions apply a mixedmethods design in their studies; for instance, Anders Sevelsted who describes the moral elites of movements by combining social network analysis and qualitative interpretive methods, since moral elites are characterized by both their position in a network, their organizational and educational credentials, and their prolifcness in public discourse (Chap. 10). Similarly, Troels Krarup combines survey and interview data in interesting ways to show how seemingly disparate movement groups in fact form a common moral voicing community with shared understandings of their cause (Chap. 7). Qualitative methods such as feldwork and textual analysis are also applied. Sara Kalm and Ana Meeuwisse's chapter on (mis)recognition and claimsmaking show how such methods can help uncover the societal meta-values to which countermovements appeal (Chap. 13). Gritt B. Nielsen uses feldwork to show how student activists seek to balance deontological and virtue ethical claims in emerging counter publics (Chap. 9). Studying visual material and social media activity—in the case of Eva Svatoňová memes on social media (Chap. 11) and in the case of Jun Liu online emotional discourse (Chap. 12)—is another way for scholars to show how certain cultural types are used in movements with specifc illocutionary implications.

Whether the paradigm of morality in movements will be revived, only time will tell, but the contributions in this book demonstrates how it can be researched using a wide selection of methods and theoretical approaches. It thus shows the relevance to all traditions and specializations in social movement studies of bringing morality back in.

## **References**


Gamson, W. A. (1975). *The strategy of social protest*. Dorsey Press.

Ganz, M. (2009). *Why David sometimes wins: Leadership, organization, and strategy in the California farm worker movement*. Oxford University Press.


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Chapter 2 Paradigm Lost? Three Dimensions of Morality and Social Movements**

**Anders Sevelsted and Jonas Toubøl**

**Abstract** In this chapter, focusing on the position of the concept of morality, we briefy review the evolution of the feld of social movements from the frst formulations of the phenomena of protest, mass, and collective action in classical sociology, through the formation of social movement studies as proper feld of research in the 1970s, to its contemporary state. We argue that while morality was central to the classical tradition's understanding of movements, it lost prominence when the feld was established, and still today, morality does not receive much attention. There are, of course, notable exceptions like the work of Jeffrey Alexander, Hans Joas, and the new social movement tradition in Europe. Relatively recently, morality has received increasing attention from scholars studying movements from the perspective of culture. We discuss the role of morality in three of the most prominent theories in this tradition, namely, collective identity, frame alignment, and emotion theory. We argue that they all present promising avenues for developing our understanding of morality and movements while we also point to limitations and inadequacies in each theory or the way they have been applied. We then turn to the constructive work of reorganizing the concept of morality's relationship with civic action and social movement by developing three dimensions of morality that we argue which are of particular relevance to social movements: *selves in interaction*, *rationalization and justifcation*, and *culture and tradition*. We trace each dimension from its origin in moral philosophy through its formulation in classical sociology and fnally into contemporary theories of civic action. Before closing, we refect on how the different dimensions intersect and can be applied to the analysis of contemporary empirical cases of social movements and political protest.

A. Sevelsted

J. Toubøl (\*) Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: jt@soc.ku.dk

Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

School of Social Work, Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: ase.mpp@cbs.dk

**Keywords** The evolution of social movement studies · Dimensions of morality · Collective identity · Frame alignment theory · Emotions · Moral philosophy · Classical sociology

Long before a research feld of social movement studies emerged in the 1970s, masses, civic protest, and social movements had already been formulated as a research object in the social sciences. In these early conceptualizations, movements were seen as intrinsically linked to the question of society's moral order. In general, the view was not exactly positive, with the notable exception of Marxists who saw the workers' movement as the expression of the coming morally superior social order that would fnally form society's ideational superstructure and the distribution of goods in accordance with how they believed economic value was created (Marx & Engels, 2008 [1848]; Lenin, 2012 [1902]). Beyond Marxist circles, movements were predominantly viewed as irrational masses (Park, 1972 [1903]; Le Bon, 2009 [1896]; Tarde, 1903 [1890], Tarde, 2009 [1898]), which by virtue of their irrationality were seen as morally inferior. In all cases, morality was what it was all about. From the French and Scottish Enlightenment, Hegel and Marx to Weber, Durkheim, and Dewey, the founders of sociology were acutely aware that the existing forms of solidarity and morality needed to fnd new expressions under the conditions of the "Machine Age," *Gesellschaft*, increased division of labor, or however the authors diagnosed the newly emerging society.

Weber was concerned with "the quality of man" and late in his life found that perhaps the institutions of civil society, especially the "club," could help "select and breed" the new leaders of society (Kim, 2004). Of course, the international solidarity of workers was central to Marx in his efforts not only to describe but also to change the world along the principle "From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs" (Marx, 1989 [1875]). Similarly, the American pragmatists cannot be fully understood if one does not consider them as part of the progressive movement (Feffer, 1993), and, to Durkheim, the human "homo duplex" was fundamentally split between its existence as a biological being and individual exemplar and member of the moral collective of humanity (Durkheim, 1975a, 1975b).

Building on Enlightenment and Romantic moral philosophers' ideas, these early sociologists started an empirical research agenda that would enable them to trace the signs of these new forms of morality. While these authors mostly ignored social movements, they did offer rich analyses for interpreting how new forms of collective action may come about facilitated by experience, ideas, and culture. However, as argued in the preceding chapter (Chap. 1), despite being indebted to classic sociological tradition (Tarrow, 2011), morality was placed at the margin when the feld of social movement studies emerged in the 1970s. This is an oddity that we are not the frst to notice (e.g., Jasper, 1997; Walder, 2009; see also Tilly, 1998), but which nonetheless is characteristic of the bulk of social movement studies.

In this chapter, we will go on the hunt for what is left of morality in social movement studies and reconstruct the question of morality in relation to movements along overall and overlapping empirically rather than philosophically oriented dimensions: *selves in interaction*, *rationalization and justifcation*, and *culture and tradition*. We ground this heuristic framework in classical distinctions in moral philosophy and their expression in classical sociology and contemporary social movement theories. The aim is to demonstrate the centrality of morality to social movements and civic life, formulate a tentative framework for how to think about morality in social movement and civil society studies, and point to the need for treating morality as an explicit dimension of social movement theory that may beneft the feld.

## **Morality in Contemporary Social Movement Studies**

Doug McAdam and Hilary Boudet (2012) argue that the subfeld of social movement studies has increasingly become inward-looking, isolating itself from the wider felds of political and historical studies from which it originated. Preceding this self-critical diagnosis of the feld, Andrew G. Walder (2009) criticized that this trend results in losing sight of social movements' relationship to, and role in, the wider societal confgurations and historical dynamics. In particular, the question of social movements' relationship with ideologies and society's fundamental values has been neglected in favor of a narrow focus on mechanisms and processes of mobilization, critics argue. In this landscape, the question of morality loses importance as morality only fgures as a backdrop for mobilization factors like moral shocks, predispositions, frames, and narratives. Thus, morality's role has been relegated to the role of a factor in the mobilization machinery, and the question of whether substantial moral differences between movements and their constituency might result in different mobilization patterns, not to mention morality's relevance to movement outcomes, has been neglected.

The overall picture of the present state of the feld painted by these diagnoses seems valid. However, there are notable exceptions. Not so long ago, a group of scholars formulated the so-called new social movement theories that assume an intimate link between movements and the major conficts of society. According to these scholars, the shift from modern industrialized to post-industrial society associated with a major shift from material to post-material values also changed the role and constitution of social movements (Touraine, 1974, 1992; Melucci, 1989; Habermas, 1975, 1984). From instrumental movements with a distinct class, estate, or gender-based constituency, new social movements drew their constituency from a mixed set of positions in society that came together to articulate new collective identities addressing society's major challenges, like threats to the environment, peace, and, recently, climate. Walder (2009) appears to ignore this infuential strand of theory that, in many respects, exactly represents what he asks for, and it is true that this tradition's infuence has declined in the past decades.

Despite this decline, the perspective is refected in Jeffrey Alexander and Hans Joas' prominent theories of the formation of society's general values and morality, which, however, depart from very different theoretical traditions than the new social movement strand. Alexander builds on the Durkheimian and Parsonian heritage, according to which there are certain core values in any society that constitute a symbolic "civil sphere." He shows how excluded groups, such as African Americans and Jews, struggle to gain societal acceptance by representing their particular group identity in the categories and codes accepted as universal in the civic sphere's symbolic order (Alexander, 2006). Joas sees social movements as emblematic of creative action that can reshape normative orders (Joas, 1996), just as he has shown how experiences of sacrality have historically moved and shaped the struggle for human rights, for example in the antislavery movement, and generally have served as a source of both legitimation of and challenges to rulers (Joas, 2013, 2017). Here, movements fgure prominently, but these theories are much more comprehensive than just explanations of social movements. Social movements are relegated to what McAdam and Boudet (2012) consider their proper place as one—important—element in a more general theory of society. However, few social movement studies are concerned with these issues, as documented by McAdam and Boudet. Thus, while recently formulated theories and the prominent tradition of new social movements all are deeply concerned with movements' relation to the overall moral questions at the institutional or macro-level of society, this is not the central concern of the feld of social movement studies and civic action. Here, the question of mobilization dominates, and to the extent such "grand" theories are taken into account, they are used to account for mobilizations' dependence on certain (un)favorable structural conditions. The new social movement question of whether certain kinds of movements arise in relation to certain moral and material conficts in society, or the question of how movements shape such conficts and the history of society, is rarely addressed. Rather, the focus is on the inner dynamics of mobilization, mainly on micro- and meso-level dynamics. Our point is not that we should stop studying the dynamics of mobilizations, far from it. The point is rather that the feld should also preoccupy itself with the question of how movements shape history and vice versa; that is, the category of historical infuences and outcomes. Here, morality fgures as a central, yet contested, category in new social movement theories and Joas' and Alexander's work. Thus, there seems to be good reason why the feld should integrate more with existing theories and maybe consider revitalizing the heuristics of the new social movement tradition.

Looking at the literature preoccupied with the question of mobilization, we do fnd a range of concepts like moral shocks (Jasper & Poulsen, 1995), injustice symbols (Olesen, 2017), narratives (Polletta, 1998; Ganz, 2009), value predispositions (van Deth & Scarbrough, 1995; Gundelach, 1995; Gundelach & Toubøl, 2019), emotional batteries and liberation (Jasper, 2018), framing (Snow et al., 1986; Snow & Benford, 1992), collective identity (Melucci, 1989, 1995, 1996; Tilly, 2005), and political altruism (Giugni & Passy, 2001; Tilly, 2001; Passy, 2013; Jacobsson & Lindblom, 2016; Carlsen et al., 2020), where moral distinctions and evaluations constitute the central object studied. These concepts may, however, (1) focus on the structural elements of relations and networks central to explaining mobilization mechanisms. This sidesteps and glosses over the moral identity formation happening at the micro-level of interaction connecting the mobilization to society's morality. The latter (2) may result in the reifcation of the dynamic aspects of the phenomenon, disconnecting it from the wider moral confguration in society's institutions and culture. Finally, (3) they may suffer from not defning the assumed moral or ethical drivers at play. We will expand on these criticisms below.

However, differently approached—and often more in line with their authors' original intent, these concepts are promising avenues for connecting the internal dynamics of mobilization more profoundly to society's moral questions. In relation to the frst and second critique, paying more attention to the dynamic and interactional aspects would allow us to study how moral dynamics relating to the surroundings of social movements, for example, moral "templates" and institutions, develop and condition mobilization as well as infuence actors interacting with movement actors. In relation to the third point of critique, this can be achieved either by defning the moral basis of the mechanisms or processes identifed by the concepts, which would allow for connecting them to the wider moral struggles and divides in society.

The three critiques can be exemplifed by shortly considering three prominent theories in this area, namely, (1) the concept of *collective identity* and relational explanations of *political altruism* related to the tendency to focus on the structural properties and not paying attention to the interactional basis where the moral meanings are created, (2) the theory of *framing* in relation to the problem of reifcation, and (3) the concept of *moral shocks* in relation to the problem of not defning the moral basis of emotions.

## *Morality in Interaction*

The frst critique, concerning the need to study the interactional basis of relationships in order to capture their moral content, departs from the most infuential single contribution from the new social movement tradition, namely Alberto Melucci's concept of collective identity (Melucci, 1989, 1995; Melucci, 1996). Melucci intended for the concept to encapsulate how social movements, through identity formation based on meaning-making and negotiations at the micro-level of interactions, enable both collective action and mobilization. More importantly, the formation of collective identity also provides shared interpretations of society and historic moments in relations to the past and future. Therefore, collective identities link movements to society's overall moral struggles and in this way infuence society's future social, economic, political, and moral development. This was also the case with the "old" movements where divisions fxed identities by class, estate, gender, nationality, ethnicity, and religion. What was striking about the new social movements was that such divisions had lost their grip on society, if not altogether disappeared, moving the task of negotiating, inventing, and stabilizing collective identities to the center of the so-called new social movements' activities. In the formation of such new collective identities, formulating new moral templates takes the center stage as students of radicalization and socialization have shown (e.g., della Porta, 2018; van Stekelenburg, 2017; Klandermans, 2014).

Despite this detailed and substantive theory, the concept of collective identity has often been reifed into a question of static us/them relations (e.g., Tilly, 2005; Tarrow, 2011). Here, the focus is on the defnitions of the in-group members and how they are distinct from the out-group members who are perceived as the opponents in contentious struggles. This approach to collective identity loses sight of the aspect of negotiating new meanings and identities at the interactional level and envisioning new moral orders, which, if successful, may play a vital role in recreating society and the course of history. Instead, the relational perspective focuses on the us/them relationship's functional role in mobilization. For example, for certain purposes, analyses at aggregated levels of historical or country comparison can be fully justifed, but for analyses of collective identity proper, it is not. For instance, if the purpose is to understand a movement's role in the wider political struggles over distribution, recognition, institutions, and values in society at large, a functionalist us/them approach is of little help in answering questions such as the following: What are the moral claims of the movement? What injustices and wrongs are targeted and what institutional changes struggled for? Who are considered opposed to the movement's aims? What cultural repertoires are mobilized in one context, what repertoires are available in another context, and how may they transform the collective identity and its moral contents? As Passy and Monsch (2020) show, taking a closer look at these elements of collective identity appears crucial if we are to link the movement to the wider moral struggles of society and perhaps identify what causal agency is exerted by movement actors. Also, employing the overlapping concepts of group and scene style, Eliasoph and Lichterman have demonstrated how interactional styles of movement cultures strongly infuence aims and repertoires of movements (Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003; Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014), which in turn have implications for what moral claims movements can make (Lichterman & Dasgupta, 2020; Carlsen et al., 2021).

The relational approach has also been central to the explanation of political altruism and solidarity activism, a very moral kind of activism indeed (Passy, 2001). Tilly (2001) argues that what motivates altruistic activism toward out-group individuals is the moral identities of the in-group network of activists and their shared collective identity. Here, altruism is a by-product of in-group commitments and identities. To the extent the goal is to explain the mechanism of mobilization, this explanation might suffce, but if we are interested in understanding how such altruistic acts entail moral visions, we need to understand the interaction that created and sustained the in-group network ties, commitments, and identities in the frst place (Passy & Monsch, 2020; Monsch & Passy, 2018; Passy & Monsch, 2014). Such perspectives enable us to inquire into how activism might alter our worldviews and moral beliefs (Passy & Giugni, 2000, 2001). Challenging Tilly's assertion that political altruism is simply a by-product of in-group commitments and identities, a recent study even suggests that the interaction and relationship between the activist and the out-group individual puts ethical demands (Løgstrup, 1997) on the activist and becomes a moral experience with wide-ranging consequences for the ebb and fow of activism as well as the overall future life course of activists (Carlsen et al., 2020), a phenomenon also observed by others (e.g., McAdam, 1988).

## *Disconnected Moralities*

The second critique is in many ways an extension of the frst and concerns how reifcation of the dynamic aspects of social movement processes disconnects them from the wider moral confguration in society's institutions and culture in which they are embedded. As in the case of collective identity and structural approaches to networks, the reifed versions of the theories may still be useful in explaining the mechanisms of mobilization in an abstract analytical manner, but the substantial moral contents of the collective action and social movements are easily lost. Questions of how movements are expressions of certain particular moral struggles and how they might inform and infuence future ones—the very reason why we study these movements at all—are pushed to the margins in such analyses. To be clear, our point is not to do away with analysis and theories of mobilization processes—this is a crucial part of understanding movements—but to motivate a renewed interest in how movements relate to moral struggles, institutions, and historical change (McAdam & Boudet, 2012; Walder, 2009).

The consequences of reifcation can be illustrated by the framing theory. The framing concept was originally designed to draw attention to the importance of the particular moral contents of social movements and how movements were embedded in and dependent upon specifc cultures and moral orders. Based on Erving Goffman's interactionist framework (Goffman, 1974) and Antonio Gramsci's dynamic and relational theory of hegemonic struggles (Gramsci, 1971), the theory initially aimed for careful analyses of the dynamic development and consequences of movements' framing of their ideological goals in relation to specifc topics and events (Snow et al., 1986; Snow & Benford, 1988). The theory's ambition was to take into account how both interactional processes, internally among movement actors and relations, and interaction with external actors, competing political forces, infuenced and shaped this process. Thereby the theory convincingly argued that a successful mobilization of a movement did not rely solely on its ability to mobilize resources and navigate the political opportunity structures but also on its ability to formulate its goals and strategies in ways that resonated with the pressing issues and problems of the intended audience's lifeworlds (Snow & Benford, 1992). This interaction between movement, audience, and other actors was perceived as dynamic. Therefore, the on-going interaction, formulations, and interpretations of moral claims, feelings, and political opportunities were in theory perceived as the central object of study that would have consequences for the success or failure of the movement.

However, as in the case of collective identity, this theoretical program, despite the concept's huge success (Benford & Snow, 2000), has turned out somewhat differently. Robert D. Benford (1997) criticizes that, in the application of framing theory reifcation, static and elite bias tendencies have crippled the original dynamic and interactionist ambitions. In many ways similar to the fate of the collective identity concept, this implies losing focus on how new moral ideas and ideologies are developed and how they interact. In particular, the Gramscian aspects directly linking framing to the struggles over political hegemony tend to have been disconnected. A reconnection, we shall later argue, might constitute an avenue for revitalizing framing for the purpose of studying movements' dependence on, and infuence on, society's morality. However, the tendency in the use of framing theory is that moral ideas are primarily evaluated for their role in the process of mobilizing.

## *Moral Foundations*

We exemplify the third criticism of not conceptualizing the assumed moral or ethical theoretical foundation by James Jasper's work on the moral shock theory (1995) and *The Art of Moral Protest* (Jasper, 1997). Jasper's contribution constitutes one of the most infuential cornerstones of the cultural turn within social movement studies that has contributed to bringing culture and tradition back into social movement studies and political sociology (Goodwin & Jasper, 1999; Goodwin et al., 2000; Goodwin & Jasper, 2004). In particular, the theory has reintroduced moral emotions as a factor in the process of mobilization. However, we will argue that the theory, paradoxically, is somewhat limited when it comes to analyzing how moral developments shape and are shaped by social movements. This limitation has its roots in the theory's failure to conceptualize morality as something separate from emotions.

In Jasper's culturalist version, morality, on the one hand, refers to already established principles, values, and visions available in the culture and, on the other hand, moral intuitions (Jasper, 1997) that form the basis of moral judgment and motivate action. This is also the case with the concept of moral shocks that may motivate individuals without any history of activism, or personal or organizational ties to social movements, to engage in protest—either individually or by joining already established movements (Jasper & Poulsen, 1995). Jasper defnes moral shocks as "the vertiginous feeling that results when an event or information shows that the world is not what one had expected, which can sometimes lead to articulation or rethinking of moral principles" (Jasper, 2011). Here, an idea surfaces regarding how moral protest might involve rethinking and potentially changing moral principles.

The distinction between morality and emotions is also evident when Jasper states, "Even the most feeting emotions are frmly rooted in moral and cognitive beliefs that are more stable" (Jasper, 1997, 113). However, it is not unfolded how such moral beliefs are constituted, what foundation lends them more stability than emotions, and how we sense something is allegedly morally wrong. The concept, which comes closest to offering any such explanation, is that of moral intuitions, which, however, ends being equated with moral emotions "such as shame, guilt, pride, indignation, outrage, and compassion" (Jasper, 2011). Again, we are sent back to emotions, and the normativity of such emotions is simply assumed, but the moral origins and foundations of this normativity are not explained.

To be clear, this does not cripple the theory's usefulness as an analytical tool for describing how moral emotions play a role in the processes of mobilization and protest. But, while description is important, such a constructivist epistemology of emotions and culture comes with some limitations, as Barbalet pinpoints: "The constructionist conception of emotion, by incorporating the *explanans* of the theory (culture) in the defnition of the *explanandum* (emotion), can at best offer descriptions of emotions, rather than explanations of them" (Barbalet, 1998, 24). If one substitutes "culture" with "morality" in the preceding quote, it becomes clear why we need to take morality seriously as an independent category. Otherwise, many questions are left unanswered. Are all emotions moral and what are the sources of the moral informing the emotion? Does an emotional reaction equal a moral action? What is the relationship between moral orders and emotional reactions? These questions need answering if we are to analyze the role of social movements in the transformation of society's morality.

This oversight of the feld demonstrates, on the one hand, morality's centrality to social movements, but on the other hand, it also shows that the concept is often treated ad hoc, with a few exceptions that feature the question of morality at their center—often in reifed or underdeveloped guises, however. It also shows that, in the past, interest in movements' relationship with major moral conficts in society and the historical development had much more weight than presently, which calls for a revitalization of such perspectives as well as for developing novel approaches.

We are not going to solve these identifed shortcomings of some prominent theoretical strands in the feld of social movements. This volume does not intend to provide a complete moral theory of social movements and civic action. Instead, in the following section, we will re-examine the many potentials of morality for the study of civic action by opening up the concept along three dimensions: *selves in interaction*, *rationalization and justifcation*, and *culture and tradition*—dimensions that we trace from their emergence in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century moral philosophy through the founders of sociology and up until today. In doing so, we will shortly touch upon how each dimension relates to the three problems identifed in the existing literature and how they might offer inspiration for potential solutions.

## **Three Dimensions of Morality in Movements**

In the following sections, we will perform a modest genealogy of how the relationship between movements and morality has been interpreted in social thought. This exercise is not intended as a full "historical review" but as a way of understanding our present situation as well as an inspiration for social movement scholars. Now, clearly, it would be anachronistic to talk about social movements in the eighteenth century; therefore, the genealogy will trace the connection between morality and action rather than movements as such.

The concept of morality is itself defned in varying ways in the literature: formal universal principles (Kant), bourgeois half solutions to structural problems (Hegel and Marx), moral content versus ethical form (Habermas), or moral experience versus ethical content (Bauman). Further, there is a wide semantic feld that, besides morality, encompasses norms, values, ideals, ethics, normative principles, rules, and conventions. Rather than laying bare in painstaking detail how different research traditions have defned and redefned these concepts, we will pursue the concept of morality along central dimensions that we claim to fnd in the tradition.

We will focus on three overall dimensions of the relationship between morality and collective action, which will constitute an organizing heuristic structuring of the genealogy and the book: (1) *selves in interaction*, (2) *rationalization and justifcation*, and (3) *culture and tradition*. More often than not, all three dimensions will be pertinent in empirical analyses. Only analytically can they be distinguished, and they are not developed to be mutually exclusive but rather as sensitizing concepts or theoretical perspectives that help scholars become aware of, and thus able to analyze, different aspects of empirical phenomena. In this way, they can guide our inquiry into the relationship between morality and movements. *Selves in interaction* concerns questions about how moral ideas may motivate action, individual- or group-level interpretation and meaning-making, how moral agents may act creatively to change norms of society, or how individual and collective selves may change their moral outlooks as part of a process of mobilization. *Rationalization and justifcation* deals with the Enlightenment tradition of social research, and its critics, and addresses issues of framing, dialogue, negotiation of principles, and justifcation and valuation practices in movements. Conversely, *culture and tradition* focuses on how emotions, narratives, and everyday moral routines inform and underlie collective action. Movements may emerge from what is seen as a breach of culturally established norms and, similarly, work to change traditional ways of interpreting issues.

As mentioned, the three dimensions sensitize us to different aspects of a given phenomenon, and in empirical research they will overlap. Culture shapes selves, but individuals and groups struggle to change or conserve culture, just as moral selves are shaped by rational appeals to moral principles or through justifcatory practices. Certain aspects of culture may be made objects of public discussion or are cognitively framed in specifc ways to achieve certain ends. Certain frames are, in turn, sedimented into traditions and routine behavior.

For each of the dimensions, in the genealogy, we will pick out an "ancestor" in moral philosophy and trace the history of the dimension through the founders of sociology to the emergence and development of present-day social movement theory. We start the section on selves in interaction with Hume (Scottish Enlightenment), rationalization and justifcation with Kant (German Enlightenment/Idealism), and we have chosen Hegel (German Idealism) as the representative of culture and tradition. The three dimensions can all be found in the works of the founders of sociology. Building on the legacy of moral philosophy, these authors sought to operationalize the philosophers' ideas of morality into more empirical research agendas. In turn, these perspectives would lay the foundation for the way recent social movement literature deals with—or does not deal with—morality.

## *Selves in Interaction*

The moral experience that may lead to mobilization is today mainly described by the culturalist strand focusing on emotions. By revisiting the broader philosophical and sociological tradition, which also the culturalists draw on, we do, however, encounter a varied set of moral experiences that can inspire us: New forms of action may emerge from the experience of the suffering of the other, collective "effervescence," or processes of moral "decentering." This tradition points to new ways to connect the moral content of interactions with morality at the level of social movements and institutions and how such moral experiences sustain, revitalize, and transform our values and moral principles.

David Hume (1711–1776), most consequently and consequentially among the eighteenth-century moral philosophers, emphasized how morality emerged from *experience*. Hume set out to do away with all metaphysics in favor of following an empiricist and naturalist approach to the study of human nature, based on fact and observation in an "anatomy of the mind" (Hume, 1990 [1739], 212). He famously stressed that, in moral matters, reason could only be the "slave of the passions" (Ibid., 266). "Ideas," he argued, would always be secondary to experience. For Hume, perception consists of both impressions and ideas. Impressions are immediate feelings, desires, passions, and emotions, while ideas only recollect these primary impressions.

Hume found the source of morality to be essentially social: Feelings of approval or disapproval, love or hate, behavior, and motives stem from the human capacity for *sympathy*. Sympathy designates a process whereby the idea of someone else's feelings becomes one's own feelings through the association of oneself with the other through the resemblance to, or proximity of, the other person. In this way, morality is explained in the same way that causality is explained, namely, through the principle of association: In the same way that we associate causes with effects in experience, we also associate our feelings with the idea of the feelings of others, and in this way, the force and vivacity that characterizes our feelings are conveyed to the experience of the other person.

However, how does one relate to the other that is not proximate or does not resemble oneself? This, to Hume, is a question of government and public interest. Arguing against Hobbes's idea that government came about out of the necessity to set boundaries for individuals' natural self-interest, Hume fnds that human beings' natural tendency is cooperation. Similar to his distinction between impressions and ideas, Hume distinguishes natural virtues (kindness and being charitable) that are inherently human from artifcial virtues (respect of rights and contractual relations) that are the result of social conventions. Artifcial virtues, like natural virtues, are

the result of our capacity to cooperate. Conventions about basic rights are prior to the formation of governments that enforce these conventions. They are the result of cooperation and the recognition that public virtues are benefcial to us. While selfinterest is at the heart of the motive to establish a society regulated by law, sympathy is the cause of our moral judgment of just institutions—sympathy with the public interest and not just the good that we get from having public institutions in place.

Among the *founders of sociology*, we see the Humean theme of experience as the root of morality play out as investigations into the experiential roots of solidarity and altruism. Arguably, the most "Humean" of the early sociologists was Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) (A. W. Rawls, 1996). In his later works, Durkheim pursued an experiential approach, showing how collective and ritualized religious experiences were central in bolstering the core beliefs in a community through elevated states of collective "effervescence" or ecstasy (Durkheim, 2008 [1912]). These extraordinary experiences of self-loss are attributed to a higher power, and the world is consequently divided into the spheres of the sacred and the profane. Durkheim fnds that revolutionary periods are similarly characterized by such elevated collective states of self-loss and experiences of "sacredness."

While this analysis has been interpreted as a constructivist account of religion, it is probably more accurate to view it as an analysis of collective processes of value formation (Joas, 2000, 54–68). This experiential approach has most prominently been taken up by Hans Joas to show how the experience of cultural trauma, such as the atrocities of the National Socialist regime in Germany, can lead to the encoding of universal human rights in national and international law (Joas, 2013). Drawing more extensively and explicitly on the later Durkheim helps account for the relation between emotions and culture that the culturalist accounts of social movement engagement and moral shocks struggle to clarify.

Mobilization may, however, not only emerge from elevated experiences of effervescence but also from common experiences of degradation. Marx described how class consciousness emerges from common experiences of, and struggle against, oppression (cf. G. A. Cohen, 2009; Gilabert, 2017). The young Marx saw class solidarity emerging from the experience of alienation caused by the capitalist mode of production, where the worker under capitalism is not only separated from his product and his self as a productive and creative animal but also from the larger community, where relations are dominated by market exchanges rather than mutual satisfaction of need (Marx & Engels, 1988 [1932]).

As an ideal segue to the next section on cognition, the American pragmatists have shown how morality, experience, and cognition are intrinsically linked. Like Hume, they seek to describe empirically how values emerge from experience. Unlike Hume, they do not give precedence to immediate emotions over secondary ideas. Conversely, they seek to overcome such dichotomies by taking the action situation as the starting point of their analyses: Values emerge as the result of our attempt to adapt to situations. As new situations arise, we need to act differently, and thus we need new interpretations of the world that can help us make sense of it. Action and morality are, therefore, inseparable. John Dewey (1859–1952), in his work *A Common Faith* (Dewey, 2013 [1934]), distinguishes between three types of situation and three relations with the world: First, a relation where the actor *accommodates* behavior to an unchangeable world; second, *adaption* of the world to the actor's needs and desires; and, third, the religious experience that is characterized by an *adjustment* to the world, a "passive voluntarism," and a change not *in* will but *of* will, as a holistic experience of self-transformation. This complete transformation of goals and desires into a perceived unity is simply the effect that Dewey calls "religion." Dewey sees this uniting of the self through religious experience as an imaginary relation to oneself. It is an accomplishment where imagination opens up the inherent possibilities *in* reality (Ibid., 15–18). Thus, the religious experience is about experiencing and creating a moral content—a principle or an ideal as possessing authority over the way we live our lives. Since "God" is simply a label that is put on this object of experience, other ideals can take its place, such as science, art, or democracy. Such experiences are inherently creative since ideals are not simply "out there" but are realized through this active-passive process. Put concisely, the emergence of values and ideals can be understood as "*creative processes in which contingent possibilities are idealized*" (Joas, 2000, 114) (Joas' italics).

A signifcant research agenda emerges here that can help address the problem of reifying morality in interaction that we identifed in the literature review, specifcally in relation to the theory of collective identity and political altruism. For instance, how do rituals bolster a grassroots group's collective identity? By paying attention to the contents of both mass rituals in the Durkheimian sense and everyday interaction rituals at the micro-level, we can perhaps revitalize the original agenda of Melucci's theory and, by focusing on the interactional contents of collective identity formation, study how new moral visions emerge in social movements and how they relate to the moral orders at the institutional level.

The agenda also points toward new avenues in the study of political altruism where we can ask how experiences of elevation, degradation, or violation of norms of justice lead to mobilization of political altruism. For instance, both Ann Rawls, elaborating on Goffman's analysis of the interaction order (A. W. Rawls, 1987, 1990), and most signifcantly K. E. Løgstrup (Løgstrup, 1997; Løgstrup, 1976) have pointed to how the interaction order places ethical demands on the participants to care for the other participants in situated interaction. In relation to solidarity activism and political altruism, such ethical demands to care arise from the experience of the situated suffering of the deprived Other (Toubøl, 2017). Recent research has indicated that, in solidarity movements, interaction with the deprived other constitutes a strong driver of activist persistence (Carlsen et al., 2020). This focus on how our capacity for sympathy with the suffering of the Other places ethical demands on participants in specifc situations takes us back to the Humean starting point but places it in a new context via the symbolic interactionists' focus on the semiautonomous interaction order. From here, we can beneft further by following Hume's lead and ask how such experiences of suffering relate to moral cognitions. Perhaps more crucial, how do the individual's perceived suffering and injustice relate and inform more general moral principles and agendas (Boltanski, 1999)?

These are open questions to which we have no readily available answers. Nevertheless, they point toward pending research questions concerned with connecting the individual's moral experiences with morality at the institutional level. The above discussion of the moral self's foundation in interactional experience clarifes that—to answer these questions—we need to go beyond the structural content of relationships and collective identity and focus on the interactional content of rituals and solidary relationships, which are among the foci of Chaps. 4–6.

## *Rationalization and Justifcation*

The second tension laid out in the review regards the status of rationality: On the one hand, the framing perspective has led to an increased focus on the role of ideas in movements, while on the other hand, this perspective has been reifed, rendering the issue of ideas in movements as mostly a question of messaging. Especially set against the richness of the intellectual tradition on this issue, this seems unnecessarily reductivist.

Genealogically speaking, the most important root to thinking about the relation between reason, morality, and action is Immanuel Kant. To the Prussian Enlightenment thinker, reason enables us to autonomously create moral laws that bind the will. The categorical imperative famously encapsulates this principle: "I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law" (Kant, 2006 [1785], 57). The maxim is also called the universal law of nature and establishes the universal and a priori principles of morality that apply to all humans across time and culture.

To Kant, only the person that is motivated by *duty* to such a universal law can be considered moral. Acts done out of love or compassion cannot be said to be moral, even if they may be commendable. Only when a moral principle restricts us from doing something we were otherwise inclined to do can we say that the motivation was moral. To Kant, to act on a sense of moral duty is to act in accordance with universal law. The categorical imperative binds us unconditionally, even if, and indeed because, we are free not to follow it (cf. J. Rawls, 1980).

Broadly speaking, social sciences have had a complicated relationship with their Enlightenment heritage. One the one hand, they are bound by the Enlightenment ideal of autonomy and independent knowledge seeking. On the other hand, empirically, rationality is a slippery concept and often fails to inform action.

Max Weber and Karl Marx would both dedicate themselves to the task of showing how universalist and rationalized morality historically had been used to legitimize the position of the powerful in society. Weber argued against Nietzsche that there had never existed a class of rulers in society who did not need to legitimize their position through rationalized universal morality. Not only bad fortune but also good fortune needed legitimization (Weber, 1946). Moreover, under modern conditions, rationalized universal ethics would not lead to autonomous action, but rather to self-enslavement under the empty work ethic of capitalism (Weber, 2001). Marx perceived the problem of rational moral action in terms of class. Rational morality could only ever present itself as ideology—as a complex of ideas about the state of

the world including the correct moral order of things that would present itself as universal but served the interests of society's dominant class. Marx especially, but also Weber to a degree, can be said to have pursued an "unveiling" approach to show how universalist ideology is at the heart of class oppression (Marx & Engels, 2016 [1846])—a strategy that still inspires social movement studies, not least related to so-called backlash movements (McAdam & Kloos, 2014; Norris & Inglehart, 2018). Still, the role of rational ideals' positive and progressive contribution to collective action was largely neglected by the critical tradition.

However, a couple of generations down the road, Antonio Gramsci would place the question of morality at the center of the Marxian tradition: The task was not only to unveil bourgeois ideology to expose the fragility of the hegemony. If the workers' movement should successfully transform society and install a new hegemony, ideas, cultures, and indeed a morality of its own making had to be developed to raise the consciousness of the oppressed and form the historic block that by means of both organization and intellectual "trench warfare" would transform society's hegemony (Gramsci, 1971).

Gramsci's development of morality, ideology, and identity into central matters of concern for the very formation of social movement as well as their ability to exert political impact has, in crucial ways, infuenced social movement studies and inspired both new social movement scholars like Melucci but also, perhaps most profoundly, the frame alignment tradition fusing insights from Gramsci and Goffman (Snow & Benford, 1988). While this tradition has focused mostly on the rational and cognitive aspects of morality, the Gramscian source of inspiration was just as preoccupied with the role of culture and traditions, which the intellectuals need to understand in order to frame the struggle in a way that resonates with the lived experiences of ordinary people whose consciousness is what the frames aim to raise and alter.

The Gramscian approach to movements is mirrored in E. P. Thompson's analysis of "food riots" in the eighteenth-century England. He shows how this term is laden with what he calls a "spasmodic" view of popular history (Thompson, 1971). "Riots" and "the mob" are terms used to describe contentious collective action in a degrading way that denies the common people any type of agency and objectifes them as a loose collection of individuals that lose their inhibitions in the crowd and act purely emotionally (or spasmodically). Thompson instead fnds that the riots were a *rational* reaction to rises in food prices beyond what was *traditionally* considered a "just" price and the riots often targeted *symbolic* venues such as the mills where four was made. In other words, they were rational reactions to a breach of norms embedded in local moral economies.

Broadening the Gramscian approach, Jürgen Habermas, in general, and Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, in particular, developed a still more explicit argument for the role of reasoned morality in social movements. By appropriating Habermas' discourse ethics and his concepts of lifeworld and systems to the feld of civil society (Arato & Cohen, 1988; J. L. Cohen & Arato, 1992), Cohen and Arato propose that the principles of discourse ethics are at the basis of social movements, that is, the "equal participation of everyone concerned in public discussions of contested political norms" (Cohen & Arato, 1992, 345). They concur with Habermas in locating the proper place for a truly democratic project in the lifeworld of collective everyday experiences, and they recognize voluntary associations and the public sphere as the two key institutions of civil society (Ibid., 412). They add to Habermas that an important aspect of the recent developments in civil society is the selflimiting by and of movements: In contrast to earlier revolutionary projects, the aim is not to defeat other social groups but to enable the growth of a pluralistic society. Social movements thus come close to the ideals of discourse ethics: equal access to participation in deliberative processes that allow the "unforced force of the better argument" to work. According to Cohen and Arato, progressive social movements must have a dual purpose: a defensive aim of protecting and developing the communicative infrastructure of the lifeworld by setting up "barriers" for state intervention in the form of rights, and an offensive aim of collective action to mediate between systems and the lifeworld (Ibid., 530ff). These authors use metaphors such as antennas or sensors to characterize the role of movements and civil society organizations (Ibid., 1992, 526; Habermas, 2001, 300; 359; 365). Such antennas are supposed to amplify grievances in the lifeworld and put them on the agenda for systems to address. Cohen and Arato's prime example is the feminist movement, especially the second wave of the 1960s and 1970s. This movement had a dual strategy that targeted both the lifeworld and systems. They mobilized around issues of abortion, contraception, rape, and violence against women in order to infuence the norms of the lifeworld (what is acceptable behavior, changing gender roles, etc.), and they acted as "antennas," relaying the grievances in everyday life in order to claim rights from the political system as well as to overcome inequality in the economic system—not through political violence, but through the use of arguments in the public sphere (Cohen & Arato, 1992, 551f).

The critical tradition continues to struggle with the status of the Enlightenment heritage. Post-structuralists explore universalist ethics as a ghost or a necessary illusion (Butler et al., 2000), while others seek to develop a more grounded "sociology of critique" that reconstructs rational ideals from the bottom-up and explores their roles in justifcatory practices (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006). These classical discussions within the Enlightenment and critical tradition inform the contributions of this volume's Chapters 7–10.

## *Culture and Tradition*

As laid out in the review above, culturalist social movement scholars tend to equate emotion and morality, leading to confusion about the defnition of, and relation between, the two, as well as the danger of moral relativism. Arguably, G. W. F. Hegel was the frst to relativize our conceptions of morality thoroughly. He did so, however, by distinguishing different dimensions of morality and relating them to societal structures.

While Hume emphasized sentiment, and Kant held fast to reason as the source of morality, Hegel introduced a more thoroughly social and cultural conception of morality. Hegel famously argued against the formalism of Kant's moral philosophy and found it to be the expression of a bourgeois worldview that neglected the role of societal institutionalized norms (Wood, 1990). Morality in the Kantian sense was an abstraction that failed to see how individuals are always embedded in social contexts. This type of morality was behind arbitrary acts, such as charity toward the needy, that showed no sign of any thorough understanding of social relations or cultural embeddedness. This is basically the critique that communitarians have since launched at liberal moral philosophers (Taylor, 1985).

In *The Philosophy of Right*, Hegel showed how contractual relations could not be understood properly as an agreement between free individuals. Rather, contracts are entered into within the larger framework of a culturally formed economy. In this way, an exchange of commodities also involves a *recognition* of the other party as having a specifc role within a larger social system. Abstract morality and abstract right are in this way embedded in *sittlichkeit* or ethical life that sanctions specifc types of relations. Ethical life encompasses life in the family, characterized by immediate emotional bonds that individuals are absorbed by, as well as the modern contrast to the family, market-based civil society (*bürgerliche Gesellschaft*) where individuals consider themselves free agents that may or may not enter into contractual relations (or decide to hand out charity). In the end, the state secures that these two contrasting principles do not simply negate each other but are *aufgehoben* or mediated. Civil society in Hegel's account may thus encompass both the particular and the universal insofar as it is part of ethical life. Here, the particular interests of an individual or a group are refected upon in relation to the wider community (Pinkard, 1999). Ethical life emerges when individual or group interests are not simply pursued in an atomistically individual way, as a contract is entered into by two otherwise unaffliated parties. Only when individuals and groups are recognized by others, through established social categories, may their particular interests refect the universal common good (Pinkard, 1986). What these categories should look like, or what the universal common good is, is then a matter of contention, struggle, negotiation, and translation.

Hegel's culturalist approach encompasses socioeconomic cleavages and struggles for recognition and does thus in no way reduce actors to cultural dopes. This, however, is closer to what the young Durkheim sought to do. In his view, the morality question emerged as individuals and groups sought to adapt to changing social structures. To Durkheim, the ultimately moral question of suicide was a question of degree of solidarity and integration of individuals into society. Egoistic, altruistic, and anomic types of suicide refected the lack of encompassing morality, excessive pressures of morality, and the general disturbance of the norms of society, respectively. Especially the latter model was adopted by social movement scholars who saw discrepancies between socioeconomic developments and norm systems as the explanation for the emergence of protests and social movements. The perhaps most infuential of these is the theory of "relative deprivation" that argues that political

violence emerges from a psychological process, through a discrepancy between individual's norm-based expectations of their just share of society's resources and what they receive (Gurr, 2016 [1970]). The disappearance of morality from the social movement research agenda probably has a lot to do with the discrediting of this one-sided reading of Durkheim (Tilly, 1978).

Recently, the Durkheimian approach has been taken up in a more Hegelian fashion by Jeffrey Alexander, who relates culturally mediated morality to the overall fault lines in society; he points to the centrality of the "civil sphere" in mediating struggles over recognition in modern society. To Alexander, every society can be divided into two spheres: civil and uncivil. The civil sphere is built on a language of universalism that particular experiences must use in order to gain acceptance in the larger community (Alexander, 2006). Society continuously develops codes for who and what is inside and outside, pure and impure, and civil and uncivil: "(T)here is no civil discourse that does not conceptualize the world into those who deserve inclusion and those who do not" (Ibid., 55). In Alexander's view, this distinction covers motives (active vs. passive, autonomous vs. dependent, rational vs. irrational, etc.), relationships (open vs. secretive, trusting vs. suspicious, altruistic vs. greedy, etc.), and institutions (rule regulated vs. arbitrary, law vs. power, equality vs. hierarchy, etc.). Alexander goes on to show how excluded groups, such as the Jewish community and African Americans, historically have fought to be accepted into the civil sphere through means of performative acts, translation work, and "civil repair" processes. In this way, the civil sphere contracts and expands, as groups are included or excluded, but in any society, it remains a necessity to be accepted into this universal symbolic sphere in order to be accepted as a full citizen.

In a sense, the processes Alexander describes mirror-image the mechanism of moral panic in which a strong moral reaction from the public emerges as moral entrepreneurs and mass media present a group as dangerous to the core values of society (Cohen, 1972). Here, too, recognition is granted or denied based on symbolic codes and narratives that paint certain groups as threatening "devils."

Similarly, in the vicinity of social movement studies, Robert Bellah and his collaborators aimed to show how the collective biblical and republican "second languages" had presumably been almost forgotten in the USA, leaving only expressive and utilitarian individualist languages as symbolic reservoirs for justifying moral actions (Bellah et al., 1985). In contrast, authors such as Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman have shown that a focus on languages in the abstract neglects how language is applied situationally (Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003). In their studies, Eliasoph and Lichterman have found that when the language of individualism was applied, what the participant actually meant was civic engagement. Collective representations are actively developed as groups work out who they are and how they relate to the world around them. In this way, it is only seemingly a contradiction when individualism is used to advance civic action. In the local context of activist groups, the language of individualism can sustain individuals' empowerment to speak up and voice their opinions (Ibid., 756). Just as certain frames can be amplifed or bridged in processes of mobilization, actors interact on patterned and socially recognized "scene styles" (Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014).

It seems that there is plenty of theoretical inspiration out there for approaches to the study of the interplay of culture, movements, and morality that go beyond either the abandoned rigid Durkheimian relative deprivation paradigm or the culturalism that in a circular fashion equates morality, culture, and mobilization. In Chapters 11–13 of this volume, this dimension of morality is explored and further developed in three original studies.

The three dimensions of morality in movements, or the three genealogical roots, that we have teased out in this chapter are, of course, analytical distinctions. In any empirical phenomenon, these dimensions will all be present to some extent. Returning to the agenda-setting movements of today introduced in the frst chapter, we now clearly see how the three dimensions are relevant for understanding the contention dynamics involved. In the struggles over climate, gender and minority rights, nationalism, and democracy, mobilization occurs with reference to certain experiences with a moral content, for example, injustice, degradation, or loss of status. Similarly, cultural tropes are invoked and reinvented, from the Christian idea of a man's custodial relationship with nature (Chaplin, 2016) to inherited notions of gender roles—tropes that are in turn rationalized, framed, and justifed in public discourse to be viable as part of the moral struggle in the public sphere.

Globally, the probably most conspicuous recent event, the Capitol Hill insurrection in the USA on 6 January 2021, crystallizes the interrelation of the dimensions. While we are still awaiting academic scrutiny of the movement(s) involved, a preliminary diagnosis would suggest that the event was born out of experiences of deprivation and cultural grievances that were the result of decades of changing demography (educated urbanites vs. manual laborers in the countryside) and economic globalization, as well as changing gender norms and diversity ideals. These experiences seem to have been interpreted through the cultural lenses of two "civil religions": on the one hand linked to the cultural schemas of white supremacy that have survived the abolition of slavery in the USA and, on the other hand, to a strong popular democratic tradition where the trope—or perhaps *meme*—of the Second American Revolution was reiterated. At the same time, elaborate frames have continually been developed online in relation to the QAnon conspiracy theory: rationalizations and justifcations—"trust the plan"—for why Q's predictions did not come to pass, abound in a way that is more than reminiscent of how Weber portrayed the routinization of charismatic leadership or the transition from magical to monotheistic religion.

The contributions in this book all demonstrate the continued relevance of morality to all aspects of social movements, the spanning internal negotiations over strategy and identity, the process of mobilization, and the historical impact of movements and their relation to moral battles of their time.

## **References**

Alexander, J. C. (2006). *The civil sphere*. Oxford University Press.


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# **Chapter 3 Bringing Morality Back in: Three Interviews**

**Jeffrey Alexander, Nina Eliasoph, Doug McAdam, Anders Sevelsted, and Jonas Toubøl**

**Abstract** This chapter presents three interviews with three infuential voices in the feld of social movement and civil society studies, namely, those of Doug McAdam, Jeffrey Alexander, and Nina Eliasoph. They all share their perspectives on social movements' role in society's moral development, the role of morality internally in social movements, and the role of morality for social science as a practice. In addition, they each discuss the moral foundations and implications of three global contentious struggles: Doug McAdam discusses the background and implications of the 2021 riot at Capitol Hill as related to a global right-wing backlash protest cycle. Jeffrey Alexander discusses the cultural and moral signifcance of the #MeeToo movement and how it demonstrates the potentials of a global civil sphere. Finally, Nina Eliasoph discusses how the climate crisis presents itself as unimaginable in the sense that it will change everyone's way of life so profoundly that we cannot imagine what the future may be like and suggests that prefgurative communities is one way activists can approach such a political issue.

J. Alexander

Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: jeffrey.alexander@yale.edu

N. Eliasoph University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA e-mail: eliasoph@usc.edu

D. McAdam Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA e-mail: mcadam@stanford.edu

A. Sevelsted Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

School of Social Work, Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: ase.mpp@cbs.dk

J. Toubøl (\*) Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: jt@soc.ku.dk

© The Author(s) 2023 A. Sevelsted, J. Toubøl (eds.), *The Power of Morality in Movements*, Nonproft and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98798-5\_3

**Keywords** Movements in society · Morality in movements · Morality in social science · Right-wing backlash · 2021 US Capitol attack · #MeeToo · The climate justice movement

In this chapter, we present three interviews with distinguished scholars related to the feld of social movements. The three authors were keynote speakers at the Movements and Morality conference at Copenhagen Business School in May 2019 that kick-started the Movements and Morality project. They each represent a different position on the theme at hand. They each provide us with their unique perspectives of the relationship between movements and morality.

Doug McAdam is a Professor of Sociology at Stanford University and an established scholar within the feld of social movements. A pioneer of the feld, he possesses a unique position from which to comment on past and current developments in movement scholarship. Nina Eliasoph is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. Eliasoph has broken new ground in the study of activism and voluntarism through her ethnographic work and theoretical contributions to the feld. This particular approach offers a novel and singular outlook on the central theme of this volume. Jeffrey C. Alexander is a Professor of Sociology at Yale University. He has established himself, through his seminal work on the civil sphere, as one of the felds' foremost proponents of an approach to social movements, and their role in a society rooted in cultural sociology where morality fgures prominently.

The three interviews were conducted following similar semi-structured interview guides. This approach means that each scholar has been asked to present their take on the relationship between movements and society's morality, the role of morality in internal movement processes, current movements and morality, and how morality enters into the researcher's own academic and public practice. Clearly, the three scholars converge on some issues, while they have different stances on others. They all agree that morality—in some form or other—is at the center of movement activity.

## **Doug McAdam: Morality and Social Movement Studies**

## *Movements in Society's Moral Development*

DMcA: I see movement as politics by other means, primarily for groups whose interests are routinely organized outside channels of institutionalized politics. This form of politics tends to be practiced by those who do not have a lot of other options for pressing their interests against more privileged members and groups in society. This also implies that I tend to see movements and institutionalized forms of politics

as mutually constitutive; that is, they powerfully shape the origins and development of the other.

However, if we turn to the academic feld of social movement studies, this view of movements as actors in a wider feld of politics is not always emphasized. Over the last 40 years, the feld has gotten progressively narrower and "movementcentric," as Hilary Boudet and I put it in our book (McAdam & Boudet, 2012). When born 50 years ago, the feld was in dialogue with political science, political economy, and political sociology, but as the feld has grown larger, it has become more insular and movement-focused. Today, movements and movement dynamics are at the center of the feld, emphasizing mobilization and recruitment and so forth, but less emphasis on the relationship between movements and other actors and the broader dynamics of social change in society.

JT: Does this movement-centric tendency in the feld also explain the lack of focus on movements' relation to morality?

DMcA: Yes, we have a sense that morality is central to social and cultural dynamics, but the feld of social movement studies certainly does not directly engage with that concept. There are these broader social and cultural developments—moral development, if you will—at which various felds do look. They appear relevant to social movements, which, at least implicitly, claim to be highly moral enterprises. However, social movement scholarship tends to hold questions regarding morality at arm's length.

So the question you ask in this volume is, given that the feld has marginalized the concept of morality, how do we reclaim it proftably? I think it is a tough question, but here is why I think it is an important question.

Is morality about nurture or nature? We tend to think of it as all about nurture. That is, individuals are socialized in families, religious institutions, movements, and so on to hold certain moral views. Obviously, the social production of morality is an important process worthy of study by social movement scholars. But I think we err if we think that nature is unrelated to morality. There are two issues here; the frst is very simple. There is almost certainly a genetic basis for certain qualities related to morality. Think of empathy. I would argue that a capacity for empathy is central to moral development. Some of this can be learned through socialization, but individuals seem to be born with very different capacities for empathy.

Then there is a much more complicated second issue related to what I think of as *the existential function of the social*. Anatomically modern *Homo sapiens* have been around for roughly 200,000 years, but it was not until 50,000 years ago that culturally modern humans appeared in the archeological records. There must have been some signifcant genetic change around 50,000 years ago in the species that made us the kind of voracious, meaning-making, symbolizing species that we are.

Essentially up until 50,000 years ago, the function of the social, or the group, was survival, as it is for any primate. But at that point, the group takes on another function, the existential function. The species appears to develop not only the capacity but also the need to fashion meaningful answers to threatening existential questions: "Are we alone? Why do we die? What does my life mean?" The existential function of the social now competes with survival as central to the lifeways of humans. So, for instance, for the frst time in the archeological record, we start to see elaborate ritual burials that archeologists estimate would have taken hundreds of hours of work to prepare, hours that could have gone into crucially important survival activities such as hunting.

To me, this capacity and need for meaning-making is the evolutionary foundation for the social construction of morality and our capacity for moral development. The implication is that we as scholars need to honor the central existential meaningmaking function of the social. With respect to social science, we do a really poor job at that.

## *Morality in Movements*

DMcA: Within social movements, we see these efforts to produce and fashion shared moral perspectives and values that motivate movement activity, but we don't really study these processes very much, nor do we have many concepts or theories that help us get at the social construction of morality and its motivating force in movements.

I do think Melucci's concept of collective identity is important. If you have participated in a social movement, you tend to have had these experiences where you really feel you are a part of something much larger than you: that your life has meaning through your participation in this moral collective. In those moments, you sort of banish these troubling existential questions because you say, "of course I am not alone. I am part of this movement. Is it important? Of course, it is important. We are saving the world!"

So is focusing on the shared understandings that movements fashion, not just collective identity, but motives for acting in the world. Movements are powerful, meaning-making collectives, and that is a big part of what they offer their followers. So here you also encounter rational choice theories saying it is all about interest—I am not saying for a minute that interests don't matter, but those are socially constructed too. We have to understand that movements are not just about objective interest. They are about groups fashioning shared moral perspectives that valorize the lives of their members.

Framing has gotten a lot of play in the literature, but to me, framing implies strategizing. You are thinking about how you can best sell your program, which implies that you are already well integrated into a mature movement where people are debating what it is they are doing. Much more fundamental meaning-making processes must precede framing. The concept of framing really doesn't help us understand these logically prior processes of grievance construction and consciousness-raising.

Similarly, for the concept of "moral shock." That sounds like a powerful concept and one that is clearly related to morality. I think there is something to moral shocks—I have certainly experienced them—but when you really dig into Jasper's work, emotions become the principal driver of moral shocks, and conceptions of

morality are largely a byproduct of emotion. Emotion does play a role in movements, but the moral shock argument does not do justice to morality as a powerful source in its own right, apart from emotion.

JT: If I get you right, you suggest that we should step a little back from simple mechanisms like the moral shock or framing and take a look at the ongoing interaction and meaning-making processes among the rank and fle members of the movements?

DMcA: Yes, I think we need much richer, nuanced, qualitative research on these kinds of meaning-making settings and dynamics. Ziad W. Munson's (2009) book *The Making of Pro-life Activists* I fnd it pretty powerful. The focus of that book is on the group-level processes by which individuals came to be pro-life activists. His data suggests that these processes change people's moral understandings of an issue. They come to share a collective view of the issue of abortion that powerfully motivates their actions, both as a group and as individuals. I think we need more of that within movement studies.

But I disagree with Munson, who says that peoples' predispositions—values, attitudes, moral commitments—are largely irrelevant to movement recruitment. To me, it is equally important that we understand how people are powerfully acted on in families, schools, religious institutions, neighborhoods, and what have you and come to movements with strong *prior* moral views and attitudes. I think the role of predispositions has been marginalized in the feld. We think of people as being recruited through a structure of network ties. I do not dispute that networks matter— I have studied them myself—but we are wrong if we think that if you just know someone in a movement, you invariably join the movement, and then the movement acts upon you in the way Munson describes. We are much more complicated than that, and we come to movements with lots of prior socialization that shapes our disposition toward activism.

JT: I want to ask you about the other side of the equation: the output side. How do movements impact society's morality?

DMcA: Clearly, movements are both products of larger social/moral processes and a powerful generative force of new moral understandings, too. The best example in my life is animal rights. I had never thought about the issue of animal rights before, but over time the movement has profoundly reshaped my ethics in relation to all sorts of activities in society. That's what movements are capable of doing. All religions, as far as I can tell, started out as movements and are great examples of how movements powerfully have transformed millions of peoples' views of themselves and moral issues. But, again, movements are not the only force in that regard. For instance, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the USA, there were a series of religious revivals that swept across New England, New York, and into Ohio. The goal of these revivals was to bring the moral force of religion back to society. Out of these religious revivals came a whole host of movements, including the abolitionist movement, the temperance movement, women's suffrage movement, etc. So movements are both born out of larger processes of moral development, if you will, but on their own, they can have profound effects upstream changing people's moral views of issues.

## *Contemporary Struggles: The Riot at Capitol Hill*

DMcA: I see the Capitol Hill insurrection1 as a continuation of three critically important political trends that Karina Kloos and I wrote about in *Deeply Divided* (McAdam & Kloos, 2014). First, there was a profound shift in the racial geography of American politics that started back in the 1960s but is still very much with us today. Prior to the 1960s, white, racial conservatives were loyal to the Democratic Party, which was rooted in the southern USA. The Republicans were more liberal on matters of race and civil rights. This all shifted in the 1960s when two Democratic presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, pushed for civil rights reforms that angered the white south and racial conservatives around the country. As a result, racial conservatives began to align with the Republican Party, which for more than 50 years has moved steadily to the right and embraced an ever more extreme politics of racial exclusion. Today, it is really race, immigration, and ethnicity that defne the party. Trump is only the most recent and most extreme product of this view of the USA. He, like all his Republican predecessors going back to Richard Nixon, depicts the USA as made up of two Americas: there is one hardworking, deserving, and overwhelmingly white America, and then there is a large number of undeserving Americans—immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, etc.—who are dependent on the federal government.

Second, there has been a growing power of the extreme movement wings of the two parties. That has been true at least since the 1970s, and the Republican Party is now hostage to its extreme movement wing, which is why Trump is in control of the party. The third trend is a steady erosion of democratic institutions and practices since the rise of the Tea Party in 2008–2009. All three trends are clearly refected in the Capitol Hill riot.

That is my best understanding of where we are and how we got here. To this point, I've said nothing about morality per se. I have no doubt, though, that the Capitol Hill rioters see themselves as highly moral actors trying to "stop the steal" of the election. Their feeling of moral superiority is rooted in the aforementioned view of "two Americas." At the core of this narrative is a very strong moral claim that all these undeserving Americans out there are lazy and have chosen to depend on the government instead of getting a job. By contrast, the rioters are the deserving Americans, who pay their taxes, take care of their own, and came together on January 6 to save democracy. One of the important implications of the "existential function of the social" is that people are never more sure of who they are than when they are at war with some "other." During peak periods of confict, the line between

<sup>1</sup>On January 6, 2021, the US Congress was in a joint session to verify the election of President Joe Biden who would succeed President Donald Trump a few weeks later. The same day, supporters of President Trump had gathered in the mall to protest the election that they claimed had been unfair and fraudulent. The protest developed into a violent insurrection when supporters of President Trump attacked and invaded the Congress building, interrupting the session and forcing members of Congress and the vice president to evacuate. The event has been characterized as an unprecedented attack on democracy in the USA.

moral "us" and evil "them" is very clear in the minds of combatants. The stark us/ them divide imbues one's life with a clear sense of identity, meaning, and purpose. Consider the insurrectionists: This may well be the high moment of their life. Here they are banding together with other patriots to "stop the steal of the election" from their president "who loves them very much." In existential terms, this is heady stuff.

## *A Global Right-Wing Backlash Protest Cycle?*

JT: Can we talk of a global mobilization cycle of conservative backlash movements, or is it coincidental that we see all these movements?

DMcA: I think we can. Movements cluster in time and space. That has always been true historically, which underscores the importance of diffusion processes. I think these right-wing movements are drawing from each other and are inspired by earlier right-wing movements, so they are not independent from each other but refect the importance of diffusion to movements.

That said, I think we are now looking at powerful historical trends that are going to be with us for a long time: global warming, record-breaking refugee and immigrant fows, and right-wing reactions to these fows and global warming in general. I think these are such global drivers that we ought to expect to see movements responding to these larger historical forces and not simply arising as a result of diffusion processes.

JT: Getting back to the existential function of the social. Do these historical trends create a feeling of insecurity which makes it easier for strong, authoritarian fgures to get followers by presenting narratives that place people in a moral position justifying their privileges?

DMcA: Yes, that is how I see it. You would love to imagine a global response rooted in empathy, where people say, "we face this existential crisis and have to come together and recognize that global warming is starting to dislocate a large number of people, and we need to provide for them, and you can be part of this great moral crusade." But from a meaning and membership perspective, the right-wing response is probably more attractive to more people, especially when it is tied to gloom and doom: "Do you want us to embrace all these people? They are going to overwhelm our society. We can't do that. We are deserving; they are not." I believe this helps explain why we have seen an upsurge in right-wing movements in generally privileged countries. As things get worse and worse in terms of global warming and refugee fows, I fear that the lines of confict will be drawn much more rigidly with disastrous consequences, not just for disadvantaged groups and refugees but for the planet as well.

## *The Social Scientist as an Observer of and Participant in Politics*

DMcA: I am a true believer Weberian. I always bought his line that scholars should allow their values and moral commitments free reign to pick research topics. This was one of the things that drew me to the social sciences because it would allow me to act as a public intellectual and relate my fndings and the fndings of others to the things that I cared about. So I always felt that my values had free reign in picking and shaping my research agenda, as well as in the way I acted in the world as a public intellectual.

But in the process of carrying out research, as Weber said, you essentially have to interpose systematic methods between your values and your work. As social scientists, we claim to know things about social life. But there are lots of other practitioners out there who also make "truth claims" about social life: documentary flmmakers, journalists, novelists, etc. As social scientists, our only comparative advantage relative to these other groups is our embrace of systematic research methods. What differentiates us from these other practitioners, according to Weber, is this commitment to systematic methods.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of shoddy social science that doesn't conform to this ideal. Instead, the researcher interprets the fndings the way she/he does and draws conclusions that conform to their political commitments and values. Work like this isn't just bad science. It serves to undermine the legitimacy of the social sciences more generally.

My commitment to systematic methods has a pragmatic basis as well. It's what makes research personally exciting and challenging. If all I had done over the last 40 years were expressed "truths" that I already knew, it would have been bored a long time ago. What is exciting about systematic research is that you can be proven wrong—and believe me, I have been proven wrong lots of times in my research. This means it is a much more exciting, open-ended enterprise than if I were to say, "here are my political values, now I am going to write a paper that expresses them, and I will work some data in there." That seems profoundly boring to me, as well as corrosive of the integrity of the social sciences.

I also believe that the reason we have way more research on progressive social movements than right-wing movements is because the moral commitments of the scholars who are drawn to the feld are overwhelmingly aligned with progressive movements. So they are much more interested in studying progressive and left-wing movements. As a consequence, we know comparatively little about right-wing movement dynamics.

There is one other way in which I think the political commitments of movement scholars may distort our understanding of movements. I think that the tendency, I mentioned before, a narrow movement-centric approach in the feld betrays a commitment to the idea that movements are a powerful, agentic force in society. If you just focus your attention on movements, you will generate data that confrms the cosmic importance of movements. It reminds me of Ptolemy's earth-centered view of the cosmos, which seriously exaggerated the signifcance of earth. Essentially, we've done this with the study of social movements. By locating them at the analytic center of the feld, we tend to exaggerate their signifcance and downplay the causal force of other actors. I think our research strategy should seek to embed movements in broader felds of actors so that we can actually get a sense of whether movements matter relative to other change agents and processes in the world.

## **Jeffrey C. Alexander: Morality and the Civil Sphere**

## *Movements in Society*

AS: In your book *The Civil Sphere*, you argue that social movements should be viewed as "translations of civil societies" that mediate between societal norms and particular identities and interests. Could you expand on how you see the role of movements in wider society?

JA: Before answering this question, I just want to say that there are social movements and cultural movements. Social movements are cultural, yes, but there are also movements of morality—of changing morality—that are not "social movements" as these are currently understood. I do not think we have really studied such "cultural movements." In my book, *The Civil Sphere* (Alexander, 2006), for example, I talk about a very signifcant change in attitudes toward Jews in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that decreased anti-semitism and allowed Jews out of the ghettoes they were confned in. Then there occurred a backlash, most vividly represented in Western Europe by the Dreyfus affair and, later, by the events leading up to the Holocaust. There then occurred a sharp reaction to the Holocaust. This cultural trauma process had the effect of sharply undermining of anti-semitism for about 80% of people in the Western world. That is one of the most dramatic changes in the history of Western civilization. The Western society had been deeply anti-semitic during its long history as a Christian formation. My point is that this centuries-long upheaval in social morality was not the effect of a social movement, Jewish or not; it was a cultural movement that needs to be studied in its own terms (though, of course, socially and historically contextualized). Sociologists should, in other words, not only (the cultural dimensions) of social movements but also of cultural movements, which at the moment are mainly left to cultural and intellectual historians.

But getting back to your question, a strong critical feeling animated my approach to social movements in *The Civil Sphere* and after all the way up to my work on the 2011 Egyptian uprising (Alexander, 2011) and the MeToo movement. I felt (and feel) that social scientists study social movements too much in terms of instrumental ideas, e.g., resource mobilization, insisting too narrowly that social movements simply aim to require resources and power. Having participated in movements myself as a younger person, I felt that this was simply not true, and I wanted to present a systematic alternative to that understanding.

To do that, I theorized the idea that there is a "society" that exists as a moral entity over and above the distributions of unequal power and other valued resources. There are many moral dimensions, or themes, in "society," but the theme that I wanted to identify was democratic morality, which I describe as embodied in a civil sphere: an inclusive, solidaristic, and very idealized—almost utopian—community membership which is regulated by the idea that we are all in this together, that we have obligations to other people, that we need to be treated as autonomous people that still have a sense of mutual obligation. Naïve and idealistic as that may seem, my argument is that this idealized conception of a moral society, a civil sphere, really does exist and that every person in society is aware or sensitive to it even though it is only very partially realized in institutional terms.

At the same time, I would like to argue—and this takes me very far away from Durkheim and Parsons, who were certainly inspirations—that the morality that motivates and regulates the civil sphere is binary. It is composed of both a sacred and a profane side. The values that defne the civil sphere—autonomy, equality, incorporation, rationality, openness, and criticalness—are tightly connected to their opposites. Therefore, the construction of this ideal moral community has always been accompanied by exclusion. This is the irony of "actually existing" civil spheres, the tragic paradox of morality. The paradoxical combination of the promise of inclusion with the reality of exclusion is a structural contradiction of every civil sphere, and it is what generates social movements.

Social movements can be thought of as being triggered by specifc and particular issues that occur in different spheres in society, coming from experiences of mistreatment, exclusion, and domination. Such experiences of pollution permeate the lifeworlds of all sorts of groups, whether based on class, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, or sex. What all these groups have in common is not only a similar sort of structural position but a shared form of cultural stigma—they have been defned as anti-civil by the core group of the established civil sphere.

Why is this important? Because I believe that social movements fght against domination by arguing that they are moral people and they are human beings. They should be able to perform their own morality in terms of the positive side of the civil/anti-civil binaries. Many of the struggles of social movements aim to *pollute* as anti-civil—those who are oppressing, dominating, and excluding them. They, therefore, throw into a sharp light the malevolence and anti-democratic qualities of these practices, which of course, the core group does not think is fair to them, feeling that they themselves are "good people." The drama of social movements is this performative process of polluting those who oppress them and trying to gain legitimacy by ennobling the movement, its leaders, and its members as true heroes of the civil sphere, who deserve justice and deserve to be incorporated fully into the civil sphere.

Let us take a white-collar worker in a frm, a woman in a family, a student in a university, or a racial group that is dominated at a particular historical moment. A movement starts by thematizing and problematizing such domination in terms of the overarching promises of the civil sphere. Your challenge, then, is not just to fght against the boss—and this is where I really disagree with resource-centered local

theories. No, we have a civil sphere, compromised as it may be (and the premise of my work is that actually existing civil spheres are very compromised indeed). At any given historical moment, civil spheres are flled with cracks and exclusions, and these structures of strain and compromise are what dynamize social action.

The challenge, then, of workers or a dominated racial group is to reach above the people that oppress them and make their voices heard and their cause known in the civil sphere. They do that by *translation*. They translate this particular problem, let's say raising the minimum wage, by not just saying "I'm being paid too little" or "everybody deserves this" but by saying "American citizens shouldn't be treated this way. We have the same rights as you do." By projecting narratives and images, by creating social performances about injustice and salvation, a particular problem is translated into a general problem. I mean, white people are not subject to racism, so how did the civil rights movement create such intense feelings of solidarity with black people among Northern Whites? Feminism is not just a movement for the empowerment of women. It is a movement to get men to identify with the condition of gender domination. It does not work unless there is some identifcation. So, translation is very important.

When this process works, it allows there to be *civil repair*. I have used "civil repair" to describe the process that addresses the compromised narrowing of actually existing civil spheres. Civil repair is when the civil sphere is enlarged, and outgroups and excluded groups are incorporated, to one degree or another. I want to propose civil repair as a better way of looking at positive social change than, let's say, class struggle or "progress" or "emancipation" or even "empowerment." Repair points to the existence of a civil sphere, and also to the consciousness of people who are engaged, to the fact that they are concerned with society, not just with themselves.

So why is repair endemic and never-ending? Because the civil sphere can be perfected, but it can never be perfect. The idealized morality of a civil sphere because it is relatively autonomous from social institutions—has the power to provoke dissatisfaction. That is why we keep seeing social movements that we never thought would come about. The disability movement or even contemporary feminism is absolutely fascinating from that perspective.

## *Movement Internal Moral Processes*

AS: Let us turn to movement internal processes. In *The Civil Sphere*, you write about the "instrumentalization" of the cultural approach. You argue against the "classical model" of social movements but stress that we need to think more consequentially about the history and the institutions in which movements are embedded. Could you elaborate?

JA: The beauty and problems of a well-developed sociological discipline are the creation of new subfelds that become specialized and carve out a chunk of social life and concentrate on developing a theory about it. That is usually very productive. It gives us tremendous knowledge about some segment of society. But there's also a downside to this specialization. We lose touch with the macro-sociological understanding of the broad society—or simply that we make assumptions about that society that are not brought into the work of that specialization.

In *The Civil Sphere*, I developed a critique of several social movement approaches. As I said earlier, I am very critical of instrumentalized or materialistic approaches of any approach to social action that does not include the moral, the symbolic, and the solidaristic. I understand historically why these approaches developed as a critique of functionalism and collective behavior theory, but it was a correction that overcorrected itself.

I see framing theory as something positive, a critical development out of pragmatism and interactionism that provided an alternative to resource mobilization and even political opportunity theory. But it's not enough: We also need to bring in an understanding of the broader society within which framing occurs—the citizenaudience, the news media, the public opinion, and the legal and electoral orders. In other words, a movement is not a matter only of internal mobilization.

## *Current Issues: #MeToo*

AS: In your work, you have recurrently dealt with issues related to reproductive and sexual rights. In *The Civil Sphere*, you analyze the historical development of women's role in the public sphere as a process involving "civil repair," compromise, the tension between the particular spheres of home and motherhood, and the universalist spheres of public life. You take up similar issues in your recent book, *What Makes a Social Crisis?*, where you describe the MeToo movement as being triggered by a process of "societalization." Looking around the globe, the MeToo movement seems to have effectively "polluted" some behaviors related to sexual relations—at least for now and in some countries. How do you see the state of the symbolic struggle over gender and sexuality around the world at the moment?

JA: The global struggle related to gender issues raises the question: Is there a global civil sphere? In the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War and the bipolar world, people like Anthony Giddens, Mary Kaldor, and David Held were optimistic about the prospect of global civil society. In the decades since, what we've had to learn the hard way—again—is that an effective civil sphere only exists at the level of the nation-state, though it is partially realized at the regional, not global, level in the EU. Globally, there is no civil sphere because there is no enforceable global law, globe-spanning journalistic media, globe-spanning political parties, or elections.

That said, there does exist a global civil sphere in the moral sense, to some signifcant degree. There is the circulation of opinions, schemas, and ideas. News media watch each other and pick up on each other's stories. I am fascinated by the MeToo movement's reverberations throughout the globe. It starts in the USA against the moral backdrop of four decades of feminism. MeToo attacked the most intimate and covered-up domains of the anti-civil domination of men over women, responding to what happened to women after feminist civil repair had allowed them to enter the workplace. MeToo is about workplace sexual harassment, which was not an issue until feminism changed society enough to allow women to hold important jobs.

The explosive pollution against male sexual harassment represents *societalization* (Alexander, 2019a). What was so fascinating is that it emerged in the USA a year after the most misogynist president in modern American history had assumed offce. The "boom" of MeToo resounded so powerfully in the civil sphere that it was not, for the most part, experienced or defned as a partisan issue. Conservatives couldn't say, "Sexual harassment, it's fne." MeToo roiled conservative groups, progressive groups, black as well as white, Christian and Jewish groups, and gay and heterosexual relations. There was a backlash against MeToo, of course, which has defned itself in terms of legality. MeToo exerted a moral force, not a legal one, and it triggered cultural punishment and institutional exclusion without, for the most part, evidence that constituted proof in a court of law. This shows the dramaturgical and moral nature of the entire movement: Once again, women's voices were insisting on being heard.

After it exploded in the USA, MeToo did not fully "societalize" in any other national society. It had, rather, signifcant effects that were highly uneven and are continuing to unspool. In France, for instance, MeToo created not reform, at frst, but a tremendous backlash that seemed organized by almost the whole French women's movement. It's only in the last 2 years that younger French women have begun to embrace MeToo and to make their experience of male oppression fnally heard. That MeToo has roiled gender relations, not only in Western but also in southern and eastern societies, demonstrates there is a global civil sphere in terms of cultural expectations and moral opinion. Social movements—because they are symbolic and moral—can produce narratives of injustice that enter national societies outside those in which they frst emerged, often without an effective movement ever having actually been there. The women's movement in India exists, but it is far less powerful than in Western Europe and North America, but MeToo is continuing to have a signifcant impact there.

## *Moral Philosophy and Social Science*

AS: You mention at the beginning of *The Civil Sphere* that democracy is undergirded by certain binary structures, codes that divide the world into civil and uncivil motives, relations, and institutions. You similarly put an emphasis on justice as the guiding principle of your book. Would you say that social scientists, scholars that study social movements, are—or should be—guided by similar norms: justice, quality, inclusiveness, truthfulness, rationality, criticism, deliberation?

JA: Ever since my frst, four-volume book in 1982–1983 (Alexander, 2014), I have been very critical of scientism and positivism, and I have continued to publish occasionally on this theme, for instance, arguing that humanities should be as much a source for our theory and methods as are the natural sciences (Alexander, 2019b). I believe that there is a vast difference between the human and the natural sciences and that sociology is a moral science.

I wanted to make explicit in *The Civil Sphere* that my theorizing rested upon a moral foundation of radical universalism. I suggested, for example, that civil sphere theory (CST) is compatible with John Rawls' notions about the original position and veil of ignorance (Rawls, 1971). If we assume the original position, as Rawls suggests, I believe that we would "invent" the civil sphere, both the discourse of civil society and the institutions of communication and regulation. Yet, even while CST links with Rawls, it also connects with Michael Walzer's critique of Rawls (Walzer, 2010), which insists on historically specifc and sphere-specifc values about justice. Reading through *The Civil Sphere* and the many later investigations that have elaborated and revised CST, one will fnd long-running dialogues with various themes in moral philosophy (see Kiviso & Sciortino, n.d.).

That said, I want to stress that, in my view, there is a world of difference between empirically oriented theory and moral philosophy. While sociological theory rests upon a moral and political foundation—and we need to openly acknowledge this we must also recognize how different the effort is to understand and explain the complexity of empirical processes. That is *our* contribution as sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists—the social sciences.

I want to defend sociological theory as an important enterprise that sits in between empiricism and moral philosophy. Moral philosophers are, of course, social forces in their own right. They are intellectuals who bring the force of the civil sphere in its ideal form to bear as a critique on what is going on in society. But they don't conceptually explain empirical social processes. My ambition with CST is to provide a general and systematic sociological theory of democracy and its challenges. Social movement theorizing, generally considered, is a wonderful example of such morally motivated but empirically oriented sociological theorizing. We cannot substitute normative for empirical argument. Social evil exists, whether we like it or not, and our obligation as sociologists is not only to criticize such evil but to empirically explain it. That is what our contribution can be.

## **Nina Eliasoph: The Morality of Scene Styles**

## *Movements in Society*

JT and AS: You have a long-standing interest in different types of organizing civic life. Especially, you have focused on the "patterned ways in which actors coordinate civic action in a setting" or the different scene styles that are involved when civically engaged actors address different stakeholders or audiences. While you prefer to show these ambiguities at the level of interaction, perhaps you could tell us how you see such civic action in wider society?

NE: There are a lot of good ways of thinking about collective morality, but one that sometimes gets left out is the way that people can collectively reproduce or transform it into everyday interaction. So in my work, I've listened for how people manage to address—or suppress—moral and political issues that could potentially arise in ordinary conversation.

So I do ethnography to hear how issues that I would consider "potentially political" enter and exit conversations. This means listening for a lot of silence and fnding the reasons behind it. For example, a group of high schoolers' parents would meet every month to help the school, mainly by raising funds. In meetings, however, they never talked about "political" issues, like why there was no state funding to fx the roof of the school library that had caved in or why that library had pretty much nothing in it but old magazines from the 1970s. They noticed the lack of funding and the roof but only talked about them outside of meetings. Inside meetings, they would focus lavish, detailed attention on things like how to transport 100 cans of soda for a school-wide event or how to roast many hot dogs and sausages at a time for fundraisers. The volunteers did not want to talk about anything that they felt would undermine the group's "can-do spirit." So, to keep their group together, they had to avoid political issues that they themselves could easily talk about in other contexts outside of group meetings. The problem with avoiding talking about politics in civic groups is that it empties out one of the main reasons we are supposed to love them: They are supposed to connect personal issues with political, moral questions about the common good.

Disconnecting personal morality from the common good, in turn, creates a whole set of dilemmas because when groups disconnect them, the blame for problems ends up landing on individuals and individuals' morals. The youth volunteer groups I studied in *Making Volunteers* (Eliasoph, 2011) were trying to raise teens out of poverty in a racist society, through a homework club and by getting the teens to do volunteer projects. But the organizers couldn't bring themselves to talk about the immense class inequality and racism that caused the kids' problems in the frst place. They fgured that that would be discouraging—to say, "the chances that a person like you escapes poverty are really, really low." But kids heard the adult organizers talk about that when the adults were writing grants for funding as a "prevention program for at-risk youth." In a way, it was consoling to know that if you don't have a place to study and keep getting kicked out of apartments for lack of rent, and can't afford health care, and English is your second language, that it's not just all your fault that you're not doing well in school. The adult organizers mostly tried to encourage kids to just try harder rather than help them understand the roots of their problems.

This everyday, ongoing, constant interpretation of general moral concepts is a necessary complement to the kind of morality that Jeff Alexander talks about. It is in these everyday, under-the-radar interactions that the big codes of civil society get interpreted and made useable. In everyday use, the meanings of the big codes get made, reproduced, or rearranged, the same way that words take on meaning in constant, steady, everyday patterns of interaction.

So words can change meaning through constant patterns of use. An example of this patterned change in words' meanings comes from corporate speak. Words like "transformative," "visionary," "family," "community," "innovative," "fexibility," and "passion" mean, obviously, "we are trying to extract proft from you." You need approaches that focus on the codes when they are frozen solid and when they are liquid that fows in patterns in currents. You need both.

JT and AS: How do you see the role of movements in relation to moral development? Are movements causing change, or are they a product of change or simply a symptom of moral struggles and developments?

NE: Oh, goodness, I'm not sure I can even separate "moral" from "political" at all! In any complex, diverse society, we don't have the kind of totally shared, culturally and religiously rooted, long-lived morality that EP Thompson described in his wonderful article, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd" (Thompson, 1971). For us, it's much more do-it-yourself. That's why Jane Addams' idea of actively looking for situations that give a feeling of "perplexity" is so good. She worked with immigrants in Chicago at the beginning of the 1900s. She realized that her sense of morals (she was a person from an elite background) was totally different from theirs and that the most basic, ur-moral act was to immerse yourself in someone else's way of life so that you could understand their morals from within. This doesn't mean it's just "all relative." That is why you also need a concept of more long-standing "codes" that stabilize morality for an era.

The kinds of moral problems that are worst are the most invisible, structured into everyday life, and taken for granted. Yes, of course, any individual might do immoral things, but whether or not their immoral sentiments gain any power depends on the individual's whole entourage and the everyday structural conditions that make it hard to be moral. A play or sociological study that portrayed white slave owners would show how hard it was for them to resist the system of slavery; a play about Americans who destroy the planet and eat food that was grown on stolen lands would show how utterly normal and nearly inescapable it is. That would be the "structural" moment. The play or study would also show how the slave-owners or planet-destroyers made it all feel normal and inevitable in everyday interaction.

## *The Role of Morality Within Movements*

JT and AS: If we turn to internal movement processes, what are the most interesting roles of morality? How it shapes collective identity, how it enters into scene styles, framing processes, or how it contributes to recruitment and participation?

NE: I don't much like the term "collective identity" because even within one social movement, people speak and act and even feel differently in different contexts. You talk like a "mom who cares only about her kids" in one context but a "leftist critic of social structure" in another context. This fnely tuned capacity to switch styles isn't usually strategic—it's more like what Bourdieu called "second nature," having "a feel for the game." I wouldn't call it an "identity" if part of what

that means is a feel for how to switch ways of acting, sounding, being from one context to the next. I guess you could call it "identity" since all identities involve a lot of context-switching. But it would be misleading because when most people think of "identity," they think of something that stays sort of the same and is coherent, from one situation to the next (even if we've known that that's not the case, since maybe Freud).

Obviously, I like the concept of scene styles; I helped make it up (Eliasoph, 1998, 2011; Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014)! I like it because it helps you think about how people in any one social movement have to know exactly how to do that switching that I just described. You have to know, at the moment that you're giving low-income youth volunteers an award for their volunteer work, that you shouldn't call the teen volunteers "needy youth" even though they know they are needy and they joke about it among themselves all the time. The teens' adult leader and the teens themselves were furious to hear them being called "needy youth" at that moment. When you're giving them the award for being terrifc volunteers, mentioning their neediness makes it sound like you're giving them charity and that they didn't work hard to deserve the award.

The way the concept of "framing" gets used, it treats action as much too strategic, as if activists know *which* "public" they aim to convince, as if they know *how* that public thinks, and as if that public even *has* coherent political ideas. Since the 1960s, when Philip Converse and others wrote about just how incoherent Americans' political ideas were, it should be obvious that no one knows. So, it's much more interesting to ask how activists arrive at one image of "the public" rather than another and how they create and "discover" new publics as they go. That was John Dewey's and Jane Addams' idea: publics are made, not born. Activism is about constructing publics that don't yet exist.

As to the role of morality in relation to recruitment and participation, I don't think you can tell what causes a large number of people to join a movement. I've been an activist since the 1970s, and it's been our main puzzle since we would walk neighborhoods wheat-pasting fyers to telephone poles and dropping off piles of leafets at bookstores. What worked 5 years ago won't work today; what worked in a city or country that has strong unions, strong political parties, religions, ethnic affliations, racial divisions, huge class or caste divisions, a strong welfare state, or any number of other internal differences won't work in some other country. As soon as you grasp causality in one moment, in one movement, in one city, enough to make it useful, the causes slip through your fngers in the next historical moment, in the next movement. Even if you could tell "what worked" in the past, the new "media environment" has made the work of publicizing a whole different activity from what it was a few years ago. There are too many moving parts.

From this answer and the answer to the previous question, I guess it's clear that I don't think that establishing causality, in general, for complex collective action like social movements, revolutions, economic development, and other complex concatenations is possible. Even if you could, how would you tell what even constitutes "participation?" If someone is working as a professional social worker to combat sexual violence, for example, are they an "activist?" It depends on how they and their fellow social workers defne their work. If you were in an Aztec Dance Club in high school and then became a Latino activist in college, you might redefne the dance club, retrospectively, as "Latino activism," even though, at the time, you just were doing it for fun. So, retroactively, was the club "activism" caused future activism? No, that is not right. It depends on activists' defnitions of what counts as activism.

## *Current Moral Struggles and the Role of Movements*

JT and AS: Your own work started out focusing on the way that explicit politics was avoided as a subject in local organizing. In *The Politics of Volunteering*, you point to the micro-foundations of political activism—how volunteering that is at frst noncontentious can, in turn, lead to political activism. While the examples in this book are from the disability rights movement, the anti-domestic violence, and Occupy, could you extrapolate some of these fndings to understand what is going on in climate activism such as Fridays for Future and Climate Justice?

NE: I have two thoughts about climate activism: One is that even though it could look as if climate change would bring politics into every aspect of everyday life, people have an amazing capacity to avoid talking about political issues that really trouble them. There's a terrifying study of Norwegian farmers, done in the 1990s by Kari Norgaard, who found that everything was obviously different for them. But they managed to save their psyches by not talking about it as "climate change" in everyday conversation. Instead, they just focused on logistics: when to plant what and how to rearrange holidays to account for the lack of snow (Norgaard, 2011).

The other is that climate change is so impossible to wrap your head around that no one can keep living with the knowledge that everything will be totally different in 10 years. But we keep living, anyway. To do anything today, a group has to share an imagined seemingly eternal future and take it for granted as a kind of unquestioned "temporal landscape" (Tavory & Eliasoph, 2013). This temporal landscape relates to shorter-term futures, ranging from the most immediate everyday interactions (about things like how to be polite, how to make requests, how to interrupt, and how much to talk) to narratives that make the interactions seem to be going somewhere.

With the climate crisis, the temporal landscape was pulled out from under our feet. It's similar to the potential total collapse of procedural democracy in the USA and some other seemingly stable democracies, and with the pandemic that keeps making it impossible to make plans for 2 weeks from now, and that only portends future pandemics. But the climate crisis is more unimaginable than anyone or another nation's collapse or even the destruction of whole civilizations or genocides of the past. With the climate crisis, it's not just that millions of people could die or that some ways of life could disappear. It's that everyone's current way of life will disappear. It's like the story of *Children of Men*, the novel by PD James that Alfonso Cuarón made into the flm, in which no children will ever be born again (a similar

premise is the basis of a novel by Louise Erdrich, *The Last Home of the Future Living God*—it's a plot that's in the cultural air lately). On the surface of it, activism is about planning the future. As part of my current research, I am asking how activists work together toward any near-term or long-term future vision when we know that the future will be completely unlike anything we've ever experienced before?

One way of working toward an unknowable future is through "prefgurative communities," "being the change you want to see," living as if the better world is already here. But with climate change, what would that mean? Living the way the poorest of the world's poor live? Not requiring any inputs that are currently produced in unsustainable ways? Everyone would have to leave some cities altogether (if they don't have enough water to support their current population). Even if, in principle, many foods can be produced sustainably, they usually aren't. Establishing a prefgurative community could actually even end up hampering the goal of slowing down climate change. Vegetarianism is, in the USA, seen as snobby by most people. In India, it can map onto an ultra-right-wing, "Hinduist," anti-Muslim agenda. Bike paths and green spaces lead to gentrifcation in places like Mexico City, with huge class disparities. Conversely, in my current study, I'm seeing that seemingly nonprefgurative electoral politics campaigns like the Bernie Sanders campaign bring really diverse people together across vast social divisions.

In other words, morality is always situational. The situation includes "social structure (whatever we mean by it)." Making beautiful green spaces can be good in a city that doesn't have a big gentrifcation problem but bad in a city that does have one. This is why I still have nightmares about not having understood Kant.

## *The Role of Morality in Social Science*

JT and AS: In a recent review2 of sociological ethnographic works on the rural white Trump voters, you write, "Sociologists! We forgot to do half of our job! We forgot to offer a vision of a good society. Without that, the ferce competition looks like the only game in town. In this game, there will inevitably be losers." Could you expand on how you see the role of morality in guiding social scientists?

NE: Here, in the USA, a really far-off, crazy utopian vision would be good universal health care, parental leave (most Americans don't get any, paid or unpaid), free or affordable daycare (ours costs about \$15,000 a year or more), free university education, good public schools, public transit, and vacation. In other words, what exists in Denmark, Finland, and a dozen other countries. This vision would be better than what we have, even though it's "remedial" (a "remedial class" in elementary school is one you have to take if you funked the class the frst time). We funked. We are still funking, though possibly a little closer to passing than we were before the pandemic.

<sup>2</sup> https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/543/docs/Contexts\_Scorn\_Wars.pdf

Till a few months ago, a few months into the pandemic, most American sociologists weren't even focused on the remedial vision! We focused on that and climate change a little. But we were mainly focused on letting everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc., get ahead: an important goal, of course, but once we got there, then what? The question is not on the shared "map" of the future. Would it be better if the one-tenth of 1% of Americans who control more wealth than the bottom 90% were more racially diverse? Not much.

So, many Americans, including people of color, assume that getting ahead at other people's expense is the only way to have a decent life. This is a disaster for any moral, political vision! Nancy Fraser puts it well when she says that the choice shouldn't be between this neoliberal feminism (or neoliberal race politics) that is all about getting ahead in a fght to the death and right-wing populism. Right-wing populism at least addresses the real poverty and hardness of life in a society with no social rights. We professors who only focus on making it possible for more African Americans to get ahead (while leaving other African Americans behind, according to "merit," such as health and cleverness? That's one part no one ever mentions!) are antagonizing people who suspect that they would not get ahead no matter what and who really, really resent people who get ahead enough to get vacations and health care (as Katherine Cramer shows in her book, *The Politics of Resentment*) (Cramer, 2016). While we're working on increasing racial equality, we should also be making it clear that it's not a trade-off: All Americans can get health care and a vacation.

In a strange way, it is working toward an attainable vision that has given us something to hope for. Climate change is a much more "demoralizing" problem because no one has a vision for how to live well in whatever world it will create. Demoralize originally meant "to take someone's morals away," but it makes sense that it now only means "to discourage." Morality and hope are twins.

## **References**


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# **Part II Selves in Interaction**

# **Chapter 4 The Axiological Drivers to Solidarity Mobilisation in the 'Refugee Crisis': Between Universal Value Orientations and Moral Commitments**

#### **Eva Fernández G. G.**

**Abstract** This chapter investigates the role of axiological drivers in solidarity activism with refugees. It examines how universal value orientations denote normative and relational orientations of care and posits that refugee solidarity activism is driven by the activists' universal caring orientations to all vulnerable groups. Overall, the chapter illustrates how universal value orientations and moral commitments shape and orient political activism with refugees based on common ideational solidarity projects. These conclusions are based on the analysis of data from a cross-national EU survey conducted in 8-EU countries between 2016 and 2017. Findings substantiate that axiological drivers, namely, universal value orientations and moral commitments, increase the predicted probability for engagement in refugee solidarity activism. Lastly, this chapter supports that in addition to attitudinal affnity and organisational embeddedness, refugee solidarity activism is a product of axiological drivers.

**Keywords** Activism · Refugees · Universal value orientations · Care · Moral commitments · Political solidarity

## **Introduction**

During the recent refugee crisis across Europe, we observed salient and polarised attitudes about immigration issues, strongly related to conceptions of national identity and group boundaries. However, many Europeans engaged in solidarity activism supporting the rights of refugees and immigrants (Lahusen, 2020; della Porta, 2018; Toubøl, 2017). Such activism is a form of external solidarity benefting the vulnerable (Santos, 2020; Hunt & Benford, 2004). It refects concern about the wellbeing of others in a form of activism that *new social movement* scholars describe

Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland e-mail: Eva.Fernandez@unige.ch

E. Fernández G. G. (\*)

as rooted in fundamental value conficts and moral commitments (Passy, 1998; Kriesi, 1993; Kriesi, 1990; della Porta & Rucht, 1995; Melucci et al., 1989). Accordingly, axiological factors, namely, values and moral norms, can be considered drivers to activism on behalf of refugees, which concern politicised identities grounded in ideational solidarity projects.

However, *how does axiological factors guide refugee solidarity activism?* This chapter affrms that universal value orientations and generalised moral commitments denote abstract systems of beliefs and orientations of care favouring support and commitment to all vulnerable groups around us, including refugees. What is at stake is the degree of universality of the activist caring orientations to others. From this perspective, I respond to the following questions: First, *how does universal value orientations refer to two distinct dimensions relevant to refugee solidarity activism?* Second, *how does axiological drivers, namely, universal value orientations and generalised moral commitments, sustain activists' engagement in favour of the rights of refugees?*

Values refer to abstract conceptions of what people identify as desirable (Halman, 2007; Van Deth & Scarbrough, 1995; Kriesi, 1990; Rokeach, 1968). They guide activists in relationship to the subjects they care about (e.g. refugees), providing justifcation and political rationale for engagement. In addition, scholars have emphasised that activists make sacrifces because they are also motivated by their moral commitments (van Zomeren, 2015; Van Stekelenburg & Klandermans, 2010; Melucci, 1995). Moral commitments are central to activists' group identifcation, providing cues about how to view others and themselves (Van der Toorn et al., 2015). Accordingly, the activists' universal value orientations and moral commitments should favour refugee solidarity activism.

This research draws upon three strands of literature to develop the theoretical explanation of the axiological drivers for refugee solidarity activism. The frst theoretical foundation refects the political understandings of solidarity, analysing it as a relational behaviour while discussing the moral sources of activism with refugees. The second literature strand examines values and moral reasoning in models of action, with special attention to their association with contentious political behaviour. Following this line of analysis, I investigate and describe the axiological drivers to refugee solidarity activism. The last theoretical foundation is transversal to the frst two, building on social movement literature on solidarity while connecting studies on individual values and moral commitments to the studied solidarity mobilisations.

To examine these claims, I focus on individual practices of activism during the 2015 refugee crisis in 8-EU countries. Using a novel indicator for differentiated caring orientations towards vulnerable groups, I conclude that universal value orientations explain important variations in activism with refugees. Results illustrate the interplay between universal value orientations and moral commitments in shaping and orienting activism towards refugees, independent to the activist's interpersonalties to the benefciary group. Lastly, the theoretical foundations are tested using a cross-national EU survey data collected in 2016–2017 to measure solidarity dimensions with respect to people's behaviours, attitudes and beliefs. Findings suggest a notable theoretically robustness for the axiological predictors on refugee solidarity activism. The fndings provide also lessons on how axiological drivers link solidarity mobilisations and immigration issues.

## **Theoretical Framework**

## *Solidarity in Mobilisations to Support the Rights of Refugees*

Solidarity can be understood as prosocial engagement but also as a source of motivation for such engagement. Therefore, solidarity entails a functional and normative role in addition to an empirical observable practice (Fernández G. G. 2021; Gerhards et al., 2019; Banting and Kymlicka, 2017; Schroeder and Graziano, 2015; Scholz, 2008). Findings from this research illustrate how individual political engagement on behalf of others supposes a solidarity relation of support and care, meaning 'taking and having an interest in others', that can result from noninterpersonalties ties. As such, refugee solidarity activism denotes (1) a process of recognition, (2) which then results in individuals' contentious political engagement favouring the rights of refugees.1 This solidarity process describes the actors' ability to recognise others and themselves as belonging to common social confgurations (Polletta, 2020; Santos, 2020; Tilly, 2005; Melucci, 1996, 1995). This form of engagement supposes behaviours contributing to collective endeavours grounded in common moral norms (Scholz, 2008; Hechter, 1987; Durkheim, 1973).

With respect to activism, social movement scholars have a long-standing debate about solidarity's role in individuals' participation in contentious politics. Solidarity in activism has been described to be grounded on identity dynamics of 'we-ness' (Tilly, 2005; Tilly, 2001; Melucci, 1996; Gamson, 1991; Gamson, 1975) and stemming from common experiences, feelings, values and moral commitments (Carlsen et al., 2020; Jasper, 2008). Hence, acting in solidarity is the result of multiple social interactions and of the individual's self-understanding (Carlsen et al., 2020; Passy & Monsch, 2020; Diani & McAdam, 2003).

Building on political theories of solidarity and social movements studies, refugee solidarity activism can be then understood as individual political acts of care: 'acts carried out in order to support others, or at the very least to describe a disposition to help and assist' (Bayertz, 1999: 308). Indeed, solidarity can describe acts of care and support that distinguish between interpersonal solidarity ties and noninterpersonal solidarity ties, aligned with social movement theories regarding internal and external sources of solidarity. Political theorist Peter Klaus Rippe (1998) argues that solidarity acts in modern societies can be grounded on both

<sup>1</sup>The terms *refugee solidarity activism* and *refugee solidarity mobilisations* are used interchangeably to describe *individuals' contentious political engagement* - marching, protesting, demonstrating and engaging in organised politics - to defend and support the interests, rights and identities of refugees.

interpersonal relationships and civic virtues as *project-driven* solidarities. This conception of solidarity seizes two orientations of the individual solidarity activism, external and internal, depending on whether the individual contribution to the collective action benefts the activists or not (Hunt & Benford, 2004).

Thus, the political dimension of refugee solidarity activism denotes motivations to care and act as *moral agents* in response to others' vulnerabilities (Lynch et al., 2020; Santos, 2020; Tronto, 1993). Scholars have argued that individual actions of political solidarity result from moral commitments, where solidarity entails, 'a moral relation formed when individuals or groups unite around some mutually recognised political need or goal in order to bring about social change' (Scholz, 2015:732). In this perspective, *new social movement* scholars describe refugee solidarity activism as rooted in fundamental value conficts and moral commitments, linked to voicing individuals' political values and belief systems (Giugni & Passy, 2001,; della Porta & Rucht, 1995; Kriesi, 1993; Kriesi, 1990; Melucci et al., 1989). Thereupon, refugee solidarity activism concerns political acts in response to individuals' value threats and moral commitments (Sabucedo et al., 2017; Verhulst, 2012). Accordingly, axiological drivers (values and moral commitments) underpin the ideational solidarity projects and the social confgurations in which refugee solidarity activism is grounded.

## *Values and Refugee Solidarity Activism*

Empirical analysis of the role of values in political engagement advances that values differ from attitudes and behaviours because they are underlying orientations informing and guiding individuals' political actions and commitments (Toubøl, 2019; Halman, 2007; Van Deth & Scarbrough, 1995). In this vein, there is notable consensus in the literature for values as stable and fundamental principles central to the self-identity (Vecchione et al., 2015; Bardi et al., 2014; Schwartz, 2007; Kriesi, 1990). Although some perspectives differ, for the most part, values are conceptualised as principles guiding individual behaviour based on what is right or desirable (Schwartz, 2007; Hitlin & Piliavin, 2004; Kriesi, 1990).

Indeed, values have been widely studied as motivational factors for various forms of political behaviour, enriching the models and conceptualisations of activism (Miles, 2015; Schwartz, 2007). *New social movement* scholars suggest that solidarity activism is grounded on loose ties, focusing on cultural and symbolic conficts related to moral and identity concerns (della Porta & Rucht, 1995; Kriesi, 1990, 1993; Melucci et al., 1989), having a genuine political orientation based on the individual value orientations. These research conclude that solidarity activism tends to surpass local arenas, suggesting various levels of identifcation based on postmaterialist concerns and left-libertarian ideological values (Giugni & Passy, 2001; Passy, 1998; della Porta & Rucht, 1995).

Nevertheless, to better capture the role of values in refugee solidarity activism, I suggest that we need to analyse values as bi-dimensional (i.e. normative and relational). I distinguish between values as 'abstract imperatives to political action' and values as 'embodying individual caring orientations', which I examine through the bi-dimensionality of universal value orientations. First, I consider how universal value orientations denote abstract systems of beliefs guiding refugee solidarity activism. Second, I illustrate how universal value orientations denote activists' care orientations.

Research on the abstract dimension of values analyse how values suppose a sense of *devoir* to individuals that goes beyond immediate goals (Gorski, 2017; Fuchs, 2017). In this sense, empirical perspectives about universal value orientations suppose a valuation criterion, where the taxonomy between universal and particular orientations has two ends of a continuum. Individuals are supposed to translate this continuum into drivers of action and attitudes towards groups and people (Davidov et al., 2008; Blau, 1962; Parsons & Shils, 1951). Universal and particular value orientations uphold a crucial divide about valuation standards leading to political behaviour. The behaviour is particularly oriented when it discriminates between groups based on internal features or shared ties. Conversely, it is universally oriented when applied to every possible set of circumstances, independentof individuals' ties, status and/or social categories of belonging (de Blasio et al., 2019; Blau 1962; Parsons and Shil 1951; Kant, 2002 [1788]). Research on individual activism indicates that universal value orientations relate to individual systems of beliefs about egalitarianism, humanitarian and welfare concerns in relation to others (Feldman & Steenbergen, 2001; Vecchione et al., 2015; Schwartz, 2007; Schwartz, 2006). Findings posit that universal value orientations are key predictors to the willingness of activists to favour outgroups politically (Borshuk, 2004). In this sense, refugee solidarity activism supposes recognition of a universal social confguration—'humanity'.

That said these studies underestimate the relational dimension of values on universal caring orientations across groups. Research on the attitudes towards immigrants' social rights underscore the importance of perceptions of deservingness to downplay intergroup boundaries (Gerhards et al., 2019, Gerhards & Dilger, 2020; Fernández G. G., 2019; Banting and Kymlicka, 2017; Reesken and van Oorschot, 2012; van Oorschot, 2006). Research on solidarity supporting vulnerable groups also fnds that people oriented towards high levels of deservingness and care across social groups positively impact civic and political solidarity activism for refugees (Maggini & Fernández G. G., 2019). In this sense, a universal value orientation of care is what favours refugee solidarity activism.

Self-centred perspectives concerning activists' behaviour suggest that the rationale behind individual political engagement is a result of an extended self (Miles, 2015). In this sense, acting on behalf of others could be considered as a by-product of a generalised and larger 'we', capturing individual caring concerns to various social groups. **Therefore, beyond a normative conception, values give rationale to actions** *because* **they are relational**. Values inhabit social worlds through the actions and caring orientations of individuals. As Gorski (2017: 429) explains, 'values are indeed "in the world" but not in the form of "the good" but of "this good" and "that good"'. There is a need to understand universal value orientations as in constant interaction with their subject of care (e.g. vulnerable social groups). In that perspective, Martin and Lembo (2020:76) suggest that if we plucked values out from social interactions (only as abstract beliefs), we cannot account for the cognitive relation between the individual and the concrete subject of care.

Additionally, studies on outgroup activism posit that universal value orientations de-emphasise loyalties to specifc groups (Borshuk, 2004; Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000). Absent in this research is the relationship between universal value orientations that favours individual caring behaviour across various vulnerable groups. As I argued before, refugee solidarity activism results from both individual universal value orientations (normative) and universal caring orientations (relational). What is at stake is the degree to which activists uphold universal caring orientations across groups. Indeed, the relational dimension of the universal value orientation supposes support and commitment to generalised 'others' grounded in a conception of 'a larger us' (Fernández G. G., 2021; Polletta, 2020). The relational dimension of the universal value orientations refects what is of caring interest to the actor (Martin & Lembo, 2020; Lynch et al., 2020), meaning for the activist in relationship with his intention, attention and care towards refugees and other vulnerable groups:

**Hypothesis 1 Universal Value Caring Orientations** *The less individuals discriminate across vulnerable groups and report high caring concerns about their wellbeing, the more likely they are to engage in refugee solidarity activism.*

Thus, if the relation of care is universal, it is expected to transcend particularised self-understandings or group identifcation*.* High caring concerns sustain both dimensions of the universal value, namely, normative conception and relational orientations of concerns between the activists and the various vulnerable groups.

## *Moral Commitments in Refugee Solidarity Activism*

As discussed above, new social movements comprise fundamental value conficts and mobilise specifc and moral understandings about society (Giugni & Passy, 2001; Kriesi, 1993 1986). The latter is particularly relevant for social movements such as refugee solidarity mobilisations that arise in relation to moral commitments (Sevelsted and Toubøl forthcoming). Hence, in addition to the bi-dimensionality of values, solidarity activism needs to be understood within complex social systems. Values inhabit social realms in relationship with groups' moral norms. Scholarly research on values and morality indicates that moral norms refect shared systems of beliefs anchored in social groups (Ellemers, 2017; Vaisey & Miles, 2014). Moral norms are processual tools to solve social and political problems orienting individual behaviour (Ellemers et al., 2019; Halman, 2007; Kriesi, 1993; Kriesi, 1990). Therefore, activists are not passive holders of individual value systems (Kriesi, 1993; Kriesi, 1990), but instead they give rationale to their political engagement through values in relationship to the social maps provided by the moral norms of their groups.

With respect to individuals' engagement in contentious political behaviour, commitments to moral norms are means for political action resulting from moral understandings (van Zomeren, 2015). Accordingly, *to understand the role of axiological drivers in refugee solidarity activism, it is also necessary to examine the activists' moral commitments*. As suggested by Lynch et al. (2020) 'knowing how people relate normatively is part of knowing them sociologically (Lynch et al., 2020:2).'Moral commitments are central to individual group membership and are key prisms about how we view others and ourselves (van der Toorn et al., 2015; van Stekelenburg and Klandermans, 2010). As such, the convergence between universal value orientations and the moral norms held by the activists should favour their political engagement in refugee solidarity mobilisations.

Scholars advance that moral norms can be embodied in generalised moral commitments, which refer to normative-led commitments and understandings of shared values describing how people locate themselves socially, according to what is 'right' and 'wrong' (Ellemers, 2017; van Zomeren et al., 2012). It posits that generalised moral commitments inform us about what people and groups identify and conceive as desirable and therefore engage politically to preserve it (Vaisey & Miles, 2014).

Indeed, generalised moral commitments and universal value orientations relate to social movements activism and solidarity mobilisations. Refugee solidarity activists engage in universal issues like solidarity mobilisations to support the rights of refugees due to their generalised moral commitments to distant others—humanity (Sabucedo et al., 2017; Verhulst, 2012). These ideational moral understandings render individual identifcation with social movements' issues a matter of projectdriven solidarity, making it probably stronger and perhaps even long-lasting. Literature has illustrated that generalised moral commitments relate positively to protesting behaviour because activists engage politically to express and protect their worldviews (Passy & Monsch, 2020; Verhulst, 2012; Klandermans et al., 2008; Klandermans, 2002). Through project-driven solidarities based on ideational moral understandings, activists engage in refugee solidarity mobilisations without benefting directly from any success but from generalised moral commitment to common political projects. Accordingly, individual moral commitments can drive activists' solidarity between both like-minded individuals and people in need (Polletta, 2020; van Zomeren, 2015; van Zomeren, 2013).

Such generalised moral commitments concern altruistic understandings of common goods grounded in universal civic virtues. Thus, it follows that universal civic virtues should not generate differentiated caring orientations across groups because in principle they guide generalised altruistic actions independently of the benefciaries. In sum, this type of moral commitment refers to a generalised object of care (e.g. all, everyone or humanity). In this sense, literature suggest that activists engage in refugee activisms to protect and promote their generalised moral commitments within action-oriented frames (van Zomeren, 2013, 2015)—meaning project-driven solidarities. Indeed, activists holding generalised moral commitments should engage more in refugee solidarity activism as their group norms are in accordance with universal humanitarian concerns and values:

**Hypothesis 2 Generalised Moral Commitments** *Individuals who report generalised moral commitments when engaging in prosocial behaviour (*e.g. *volunteering) are more likely to engage in solidarity mobilisations to support refugees, as civic virtues vis-à-vis common goods, fairness and equality shape their moral commitments.*

## **Data and Measurements**

Analysis in this study draws upon a comprehensive 8-EU country dataset (Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) collected in 2016–2017 from the EU-funded research project, TransSOL,2 to measure individual forms and factors related to transnational solidarity. The pooled dataset contains 16,916 respondents (Level 2 N), with minimum 2061 to 2221 respondents per country. The sampling strategy corresponds to a randomised sample, designed to match national populations' distributions on education, age, gender and region. The survey questionnaire sought to address the various dimensions of solidarity based on standardised cross-national measures of people's behaviours, attitudes and beliefs. To test the above-identifed hypotheses, this study employed Bayesian statistical analyses using the full dataset in combination with a logistic multilevel random intercept model. Appendix 4.1 to this chapter contains all variables recordings used in the models.

The dependent variable, i.e. refugee solidarity activism, is operationalised as a binary variable (0 1), and refugee solidarity activism is coded as outcome (1) where individuals stated they engaged in any of the following forms of contentious political behaviour to support refugees: *Have you ever done any of the following in order to support the rights of refugees/asylum seekers—attended a march, protest, and demonstration or engaged as an active member of an organisation?*

In addition, two axiological independent covariates were used to examine refugee solidarity activism: one universal value orientations covariate and one moral covariate.

The bi-dimensionality of universal value orientations (normative and relational) was measured on a continuum (universal-particular) as a scale variable based on a series of items related to respondents' willingness to improve the conditions of fve different target groups. Each group was measured using a relative valuation criterion with respect to the four other groups, and then the individual relative group absolute differences were added in one scale variable. Hence, this created a continuum between particular and universal value orientations of care. Individuals committed to support vulnerable groups equally are coded as universal (normative and relationally), while the variation across groups' relative scores is refected as

<sup>2</sup>EU project "European paths to transnational solidarity at times of crisis: Conditions, forms, role models and policy responses" (TransSOL)

gradients of support in the continuum between universal value orientations of care up to the opposite pole of particular value orientations of care. The original question corresponds to the following items: *To what extent would you be willing to help improve the conditions of the following groups: migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, people with disabilities and unemployed people?* (1, Not at all; 2, Not very; 3, Neither; 4, Quite; 5, Very much)

Concerning to the moral covariate, a generalised measure was used to access the impact of moral commitments related to civic virtues in relationship to generalised prosocial behaviour: *People do unpaid work or give help to all kinds of groups for all kinds of reasons. Thinking about all the groups, clubs or organisations you have helped over the last 12 months, did you start helping them for any of the reasons on this list?* A 17-item list of potential responses was coded as binary variables (0 1).

The category: *I felt that it was a moral duty to help others in need* was used as generalised moral commitment when chosen, outcome (1).

## *Other Explanatory Factors*

A common claim in social sciences suggests that individuals are more likely to act in solidarity with people in groups of which they are members or of which their kin and friends belong (Giugni & Grasso, 2019). Additionally, McAdam (1986, 2009) demonstrates that affliation to political organisations, previous history of activism and interpersonal ties between activists are key factors on the mobilisation of the freedom summer activists. Thus, to model refugee solidarity activism, this study controls for the interpersonal ties of activists to the benefciary group, activists' political interest, structural availability (organisational embeddedness), political ideology and previous practices of activism.

Moreover, social capital approaches are also of crucial importance with regard to the enhancement of civic virtues and tolerance (Van Deth et al., 2007; Putnam, 2000). Hence, the study controls for the covariation related to people's social embeddedness and dispositions (i.e. socialising with friends and religiosity) in relation to refugee solidarity activism. With respect to individual characteristic of the activists engaging in solidarity mobilisations, scholars assert that socio-demographic characteristics are key explanatory factors of protesting behaviour. Research on political participation identifes factors such as income and education as important socio-economic predictors of political behaviour (Dalton, 2008). The younger and highly educated people are expected to have higher levels of support towards immigrant rights (Helbling & Kriesi, 2014). Additionally, research on prosocial behaviour underscores the importance of gender when assessing woman's role in caring activities; thus, this study fnally controls for the cultural allocation of women's role as more emphatic and displaying higher solidarity behaviour than men (Wilson, 2000; Gallagher, 1994).

Accordingly, control variables in this study include age squared as a continuous variable and three dummy variables that account for gender, citizenship and social proximity to refugees. Additionally, the models used include other sociodemographic covariates, such as education as a categorical variable and income as a scale variable. Further standard controls for political attitudes and predispositions include political interest, discussing politics and previous activism in political association. Additional controls include the following: social capital measures are controlled based on associational embeddedness and contacts; social beliefs (e.g. religiosity) and libertarian values are controlled using an index for libertarianauthoritarian values; and political economic values are controlled using a left-right scale. Appendix 4.1, Table 4.3 contains all variable descriptions and distributions.

## *Methods*

To predict and model the outcome variable, refugee solidarity activism, a Bayesian random intercept multilevel model was used with an upper level (countries) and lower-level individuals grouped by countries. Concerning the data structure, it is a randomised cross-sectional dataset. The upper level of analysis contained eightcountry observations (Level 1), with the dataset not having any supplementary grouping structure (e.g. networks, spatial or temporal dependency). In addition to the random intercept multilevel model, and to break apart the dependence between the grouping structure and the covariates, I applied a Mundlak device and group mean centring for the continuous covariates. I opted for a Bayesian approach in order to reduce the possible bias in the estimation of parameters and confdence intervals when applying multilevel frequentist techniques based on a reduced upper N level and thus taking into account as well the nested structure.

Three Bayesian models were run to assess each individual predictors' effects under control of covariates. As an additional source for a cross-validation of the models, fxed-effects models were run to confrm the Bayesian models results (see Appendix 4.2 Methodological Note). Concerning the overall models' diagnostics, all Bayesian models used in this analysis converged. The posterior predicted checks show a good prediction of the observed data. Likewise, all parameters' Rhats were equal to 1 or less than 1.01 advancing the models convergence.

Subsequently, three Bayesian multilevel random intercept logistic models (Bayesian MLM) were used to assess the covariations of the independent covariates and controls on refugee solidarity activism. Each model included a set of sociodemographic covariates (age, gender, income, citizenship and education); a set of social dispositions and interpersonal ties (socialising with friends, interpersonal ties to refugees, religiosity and social embeddedness); and a set of political covariates (discussions on politics with friends, political interest, authoritarian-libertarian index, political economic index and previous political activism). In the frst step, I only used a random intercept model with one independent predictor (M1a to M2a). Then each of these models (M1 to M3) incorporated the full four-set of covariates to assess each predictor's statistical credibility (see Appendix 4.3, Bayesian MLM M1 to M3). The full model (M3) shows that all independent covariates (universal

value orientations and generalised moral commitments covariates) maintain their statistical credibility and continue to have a positive relationship with the dependent covariate (refugee solidarity activism).

## **Findings**

The table on refugee solidarity activism (e.g. protesting participation and organisational activism) shows that 8.6% of the respondents engaged in at least one form of solidarity action to politically support refugee rights (see Table 4.1).

Turning to the regression results for refugee solidarity activism, results in Models 1, 2 and 3 (Appendix 4.3) underscore the positive covariation on refugee solidarity activism of universal value orientations and generalised moral commitments covariates. However, as expected, with variable controls applied, the probability density of the higher credibility range of the parameter values was slightly reduced. The posterior highest density interval (HDI at 89%) for the universal value orientations covariate changed from [0.39, 0.48] to [0.26, 0.38]. Likewise, the HDI for the generalised moral covariate changed from [0.81, 1] to [0.48, 0.73]. The two independent covariates maintained a positive probability distribution vis-à-vis the dependent variable (refugee solidarity activism) using credible intervals settled at 95% (Appendix 4.3: m1, m2 and m3). Looking into the full model (M3) based on the two independent covariates and after controlling for socio-demographic, social dispositions and political covariates, the posterior distributions of the model's independent covariates kept the full parameters' probability distribution in the positive axe effect (Fig. 4.1).

Model 3 (M3) validates the universal value orientation hypothesis (H1), meaning that activists who hold universal caring orientations across vulnerable groups are more likely to engage in solidarity mobilisations towards refugees. Likewise, M3 also validates that all two axiological variables enhance activism towards refugees, advancing that individuals engage in collective action towards refugees because of their personal values and generalised moral commitments.

Additionally, as expected for the control covariates, results confrm that educational levels, income and age continue to be relevant factors when explaining contentious political behaviour. Older people and people with higher income tend to engage less in collective action, as do people with lower levels of education. However, fndings do not correlate the gender caring role of women with refugee solidarity activism nor the correlation of social categorisation of respondents' national membership (citizenship) with refugee solidarity activism. In addition, as previously discussed, social


**Table 4.1** Reported individual solidarity mobilisations in favour of the rights of refugees (in %)

**Fig. 4.1** Independent parameters and control covariates probability distributions concerning refugee solidarity activism

proximity to refugees could enhance refugee solidarity activism due to interpersonal ties. Nevertheless, the results do not support theories on social identifcation and ties as drivers of refugee solidarity activism. Also, a major association was observed with respect to social dispositions covariates as they relate to social capital (i.e. social contacts with friends and participation in associations), substantiating the positive covariation between activism, social contacts and organisational embeddedness. This is in line with previous literature fndings suggesting that civic behaviour and political engagement result from organisational settings and social norms (Van Deth et al., 2007; Putnam, 2000; Verba et al., 1995).

With regard to research results on refugee solidarity activism while controlling for political covariates, fndings confrmed a positive covariation of libertarian values;new social movement literature affrms that activists' identifcation with postmaterialist and left-libertarian ideologies enhances political solidarity. With respect to the relation of other political values on refugee solidarity activism, models confrm the underlying infuence of ideological affnity in activism. Individuals who uphold left ideological orientations are more inclined to engage in solidarity mobilisations compared to individuals upholding right leaning orientations. A closer examination of political covariates results highlights that previous practices of activism are the strongest political predictor for engagement in refugee solidarity activism.

In addition to the understanding of the role of universal value orientations and moral reasoning, these fndings support the conclusions of previous literature on activism suggesting that long-standing activism is a product of attitudinal affnity, as well as activist previous practices (Corrigall-Brown, 2012; McAdam, 1986, 2009).

To assess the signifcance of the estimated parameters, a region of practical equivalence test (ROPE) was performed (Kruschke & Liddell, 2018; Kruschke, 2014). The ROPE test rejected the region of practical equivalence as zero for the two independent parameters (universal value orientations and generalised moral commitments). This test confrmed that 89% most credible values are not contained in the practical equivalence region of the ROPE; therefore, the null hypothesis for these parameters did not hold for any of the models (M1 to M3). In summary, the HDIs are at 89% for the universal value orientation ranges [0.25, 0.35] and the generalised moral rationale [0.18, 0.44].

With regard to the universal value orientation in Hypothesis 1 (individuals reporting high caring concerns across vulnerable groups are more likely to engage in solidarity mobilisations to support refugees), fndings confrmed that higher universal caring concerns for all vulnerable groups correlate with the increase in the predicted probabilities of refugee solidarity activism (see Fig. 4.2, Plot 1).

Plot 1 shows three different individual predicted probabilities for the universal value orientation variable for refugee solidarity activism while keeping all other covariates constant at their mean: (1) individuals displaying universal caring orientation situated less than one and half standard deviation from the mean, (2) individuals holding universal caring orientations at the variable mean and (3) individuals displaying universal caring orientations more than one and half standard deviation from the variable mean. Findings support that people reporting high levels of universal caring orientations across needy groups have an increased likelihood towards refugee solidarity activism, as they do not differentiate between the vulnerable groups as genuine solidarity recipients. Accordingly, fndings for the predicted difference across the three individual scenarios advance a minimum 12.2% increase in the predicted probability of refugee solidarity activism for individuals holding more universal caring orientations compared to individual holding more particular caring orientations (see Plot 2, Fig. 4.2). This suggests that individuals holding universal caring orientations take and have an interest in vulnerable groups, as all equally genuine independently to social categorisations.

The fndings support also the importance of moral commitments, in models of and explanations for political activism with refugees. This factor provides a rationale to engage politically because it encompasses normative and social understandings of the world. Individuals who report generalised moral commitments when engaging in prosocial behaviour (e.g. volunteering) are more likely to engage in solidarity mobilisations to support refugees. Figure 4.3 (Plot 1) supports that individuals with generalised moral commitments as motivational reasoning for prosocial engagement have a higher probability to engage in refugee solidarity activism relative to individuals without such generalised moral commitments. Figure 4.3 (Plot 2) reveals a 4.6% signifcant increase in the probability of refugee solidarity activism when comparing individuals among these two groups. The analysis found generalised moral commitments as positive covariates to solidarity activism, and as discussed previously, this is based on a moral understanding of universal civic virtues related to common goods, fairness and equality. This type of moral rationale suggests a relationship of care and interest towards a generalised, universal subject of care (e.g. all, everyone or humanity).

In summary, with regard to the relationship between axiological factors and refugee solidarity activism, fndings confrm that universal value orientations (normative and relational) increase political solidarity towards refugees, in accordance

**Fig. 4.2** Individual predicted probabilities for universal value orientations and refugee solidarity activism

**Fig. 4.3** Moral covariates predicted probabilities for refugee solidarity activism

with generalised moral commitments. As previously discussed, political solidarity behaviour relates to universal understandings of civic virtues and to moral commitments grounded in common ideational solidarity projects. Furthermore, results corroborate also the positive relationship between political covariates and social dispositions with respect to refugee solidarity activism. Models advance that refugee solidarity activism is a product of attitudinal affnity, previous political practices and organisational embeddedness, as well of axiological drivers. These axiological drivers are understood within complex relational systems between values and moral norms grounded in universal caring orientations to all vulnerable groups.

## **Conclusion**

In this chapter, I examined values and moral commitments as covariates to individuals' engagement in refugee solidarity mobilisations, aiming at understanding which axiological factors pull individuals to engage politically on behalf of distant others—specifcally refugees. Two hypotheses were tested related to (1) universal caring orientations and (2) generalised moral commitments. Findings support that each of the independent variables is a key factor to analyse political solidarity activism towards refugees. I have also stressed the complex relationship between universal value orientations and moral commitments. Findings illustrate how universal value orientations of care relative to particular orientations shape the solidarity principle sustaining political activism in support of refugees. Results show that universal value orientations are relevant predictors of refugee solidarity activism as well as moral commitments targeting the wellbeing of refugees based on a generalised idea of humanity.

Moreover, I have confrmed the relevant associations of political and social dispositions covariates on refugee solidarity activism. Major commonalities across activists engaging in political solidarity towards refugees support that solidarity protestors share progressive attitudinal positions, uphold social ties to organisations and have engaged in previous practices of activism. According to the social movement studies on activism, social embeddedness and ideological affnity shape individual worldviews while increasing activism. Similarly, fndings from this study substantiate that universal value orientations and moral commitments shape also activists' worldviews. Therefore, this chapter posits that universal value orientations and moral commitments fuel activists' solidarity with other groups in need. Refugee solidarity activism builds from a complex relationship between axiological drivers, which shape and orient project-driven solidarities with distant others, independent to the activist's interpersonal ties to the benefciary group.

Finally, this chapter contributes theoretically to previous literature by analysing values as bi-dimensional, upholding normative as well as relational orientations of care in relation to individuals' solidarity political engagement. Findings support that through the lens of universal value orientations, political engagement on behalf of refugees entails a solidarity relation of support and care, namely, having and taking an interest in 'others'. Therefore, what is at stake is not only how universal or discriminating is the valuation criteria of an activist but also how much he or she has universal caring orientations across groups. The relational dimension of the universal value orientation favours support and commitment to all other groups around 'us'.

Thus, this chapter provides a relational account between the political actor and the subject of care that is independent to interpersonal ties but grounded in ideational solidarity projects. It uses a unique dataset to empirically corroborate these generalised theoretical standing, and it opens research to further discuss these associations within particular contextual settings. Therefore, the chapter provides new empirical evidence and develops avenues for research about the axiological drivers to political activism.


**Appendix 4.1**





**Table 4.3** Variables' statistical summary

## **Appendix 4.2: Methodological Note**

The data corresponds to a randomised country-individual nested cross-sectional dataset. The dataset has no supplementary grouping structure (e.g. networks, spatial or temporal dependency).

Concerning the model diagnostics, all Bayesian models converged. The posterior predicted checks show a good prediction of our observed data—see the posterior distribution plot of Y (Fig. 4.4). In addition, the prior sensitivity analysis validated the model ft. I selected a model with the following uninformative prior N (0,1).

As for the models' robustness checks, results from the logistic fxed-effects model—binary choice models with fxed effects (bife)—confrm our Bayesian MLM fndings (Tables 4.4).

**Fig. 4.4** Posterior predicted checks of Y (refugee solidarity activism)


#### **Table 4.4** BIFE regressions

\*\*\**p* < 0.001

\*\**p* < 0.01

\**p* < 0.05


**Table 4.5: Bayesian MLM - M1 to M3 -** Bayesian multilevel random intercept logistic models—higher parameter prior t-distribution and lower parameter priors N (0,1)



86



Samples were drawn using sampling (NUTS). For each parameter, Bulk\_ESS and Tail\_ESS are effective sample size measures, and Rhat is the potential scale reduction factor on split chains (at convergence, Rhat = 1)

**Table 4.5**

(continued)

4 The Axiological Drivers to Solidarity Mobilisation in the 'Refugee Crisis'…

## **References**


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# **Chapter 5 Values, Activism and Changing Attitudes: Individual-Level Moral Development in Social Movement Contexts**

#### **Jonas Toubøl and Peter Gundelach**

**Abstract** Lately, several studies have added crucial knowledge to our understanding of social movement participation by demonstrating its processual nature and how it relates to individual-level movement outcomes. Still, moral factors like values remain understudied. This paper develops a model of relationships between two types of value predispositions—self-transcendence and conformity—and differential participation in humanitarian activities, political protest and civil disobedience and their consequences for attitudinal changes of loss of institutional trust and an altered view of refugee policies. We use cross-sectional survey data from the mobilisation of the Danish refugee solidarity movement, which was revitalised in response to the 2015 refugee crisis. The main fnding is that values, in accordance with our theoretical expectations, mainly infuence attitudinal outcomes mediated by contexts of different kinds of movement activities. Conformity relates to participation in non-contentious humanitarian support activities that do not relate to any attitudinal outcomes. The non-conform and self-transcendent respondents participate to a higher degree in contentious political protest and civil disobedience, which relates to a loss of trust in the political institutions. The results suggest that heterogeneity of values and contexts of activism within a movement have implications for social movements' role in the struggles for society's fundamental morality, individuallevel biographical outcomes of activism and movements' internal processes related to collective identity.

**Keywords** Values · Contexts of activism · Political attitudes · Institutional trust · Movement outcomes

© The Author(s) 2023

J. Toubøl (\*) · P. Gundelach

Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: jt@soc.ku.dk; pg@soc.ku.dk

A. Sevelsted, J. Toubøl (eds.), *The Power of Morality in Movements*, Nonproft and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98798-5\_5

## **Introduction**

In social movements, changes in individual-level perceptions and attitudes can have far-reaching consequences; irrespective of the success of a movement in relation to the political system, people's experiences from participation may likely impact the activists' future life and political engagement (McAdam, 1988, 1989). Through movement participation in activist networks, the individual accumulates a history of activism that combines learning of skills and moral socialisation. In this process, the activist learns the cultural codes, styles, habits of action and ways of thinking, which infuence future participation (della Porta, 2018; Eliasoph, 1998; Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003; Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014; van Stekelenburg, 2017). Furthermore, participation may change the activist's self-understanding through processes of changes in worldview such as emotional liberation and collective identity formation. The changes to the activist's worldview alter how the activist perceive and approach different situations in the future and may ultimately lead to changed patterns of action (Jasper, 2018; McAdam, 1999a; Melucci, 1989; Passy & Monsch, 2020). Hence, individual-level outcomes of altered perceptions, attitudes and values are one reason why even movements with no notable institutional impact and prefgurative politics may still be of signifcance to society's values and moral order.

Studies of such individual-level outcomes of activism usually depart from how participation impacts the participants (Bosi et al., 2016; Carlsen et al., 2020b; Giugni, 1998; Giugni et al., 1999; Toubøl, 2019). Not disputing the importance of the participation process itself, this leaves aside the question of how predispositions—that is, attitudes, tastes, habits, values, principles, etc., formed prior to engagement with the movement—infuence not only participation but also the outcomes of movement activism. While the question of how predispositions infuence activism has received attention (Gundelach, 1995; Gundelach & Toubøl, 2019; Klandermans, 2014; McAdam, 1986; van Deth & Scarbrough, 1995b), there is a void in the literature when it comes to how predispositions relate to outcomes (Converse, 1964; Schwartz, 2007). This void relates to the problematic marginalisation of values and other attitudinal, moral and ideological factors from the feld of social movement studies (Walder, 2009). Furthermore, studying the complete process of how predispositions directly and indirectly through the mediating context of participation in activism infuence attitudinal outcomes and how this creates new predispositions needs to be theorised and explored empirically. In this chapter, we set out to investigate this process, focusing on how value predispositions' relationship through mediating contexts of activism relates to changes of attitudinal outcomes in the process as depicted in Fig. 5.1.

This paper advances our knowledge of the complex relationship between value predispositions, participation and attitudinal outcomes by (1) developing theoretical hypotheses specifying the process of how value predisposition relates to different kinds of activism and attitudinal outcomes and (2) by empirically testing the hypotheses of value predispositions' relationships with attitudinal outcomes as mediated

**Fig. 5.1** The relationship between value predispositions and attitudinal outcomes mediated by contexts of activism

by social movement contexts of participation. Limiting our focus to the question of mediated relationships between values and attitudinal outcomes implies that we do not concern ourselves with the potential direct effects of values on attitudinal outcomes. We analyse two sets of value predispositions: (a) *conformity* measured by the religious affliation of (i) non-believers, (ii) self-identifed passive Christians and (iii) active Christians and (b) values of *self-transcendence* (strongly related to altruism) and *self-enhancement* (strongly related to egoism) measured on the basic human value scale. Outcomes of attitudinal change are (c) *loss of trust in the political institutions* representative of the partisan political system in the form of (i) Parliament and the repressive state apparatus represented by (ii) the judiciary system and (iii) the police. Also, we analyse the relationship to changes in the central issue of concern to the movement, namely, the (d) *political view* of immigration policies. Analysing these relationships, we focus on how they are mediated by the movement contexts of (e) *participation in activism* of three different kinds, namely, (i) humanitarian activity, (ii) political protest and (iii) civil disobedience. This is achieved by defning a statistical model that can handle several dependent variables and capture the layered process of participation and its subsequent outcomes and how predispositions infuence both participation and outcomes. Our case is the Danish refugee solidarity movement, and we analyse Danish residents' activism to help refugees and how their predispositions infuence participation and outcomes hereof. In short, the result suggests that predispositions, in general, do not directly infuence changes in attitudes but instead infuence attitudes as mediated through different contexts of activism in the sense that specifc contexts of activism connect certain values to certain attitudinal outcomes.

These fndings highlight the importance of predispositions in the process of recruitment and participation and individual-level outcomes. The complex fndings of interactions and indirect effects mediated by specifc and distinguishable contexts call for more practice-oriented theorising of the process of recruitment, participation and outcomes. It is also important to stress that the exploratory pioneering nature of the study implies that the fndings are, frst and foremost, hypothesis generating. This is the case because the design is based on a cross-sectional survey that, in general, does not allow for making causal claims concerning the processes underpinning the correlations. Therefore, more studies are needed to test and develop hypotheses.

Our case is the Danish refugee solidarity movement, which is constituted of people who organise to support refugees and their rights in Denmark. The movement is deeply embedded in humanitarian ideology and is concerned with a political topic that concerns a fundamental Western set of interlinked moral values of human rights, human dignity, and the sacredness of human life (Joas, 2013; Toubøl, 2017). Given the topics' strong relations to confict over basic morality central to democratic institutions and liberal societies, value predispositions are likely to be central to the movement participants. This makes the movement a strategic case for exploring the role of value predispositions, and we will focus on two value dimensions salient to the movement. Self-transcendence is a value of particular relevance because it is intimately related to the movement's core ideals and activities of solidarity and political altruism. Second, a distinguishing feature of the movement is its heterogeneous activist base consisting of both activists from the political left, local groups with no particular political affliation as well as people from conservative religious groups who all share a common concern and compassion for refugees (Toubøl, 2015). The unusual fact that the movement mobilises both traditional and conformist individuals from religious networks and progressive non-conformist left-wing activists motivates our choice of also focusing on the value of conformity, which we will measure in terms of affliation with the dominant religion of Danish society, Christianity. Also, the movement's broad and varied collective action repertoire makes it strategic for studying how value predispositions' infuence on attitudinal outcomes is mediated by different kinds of activism. In turn, the broad repertoire creates interaction with a wide array of political institutions, making it relevant to consider how different kinds of activism relate to different attitudinal outcomes of institutional trust. In sum, being the most likely case for observing variation in values, movement repertoire and involvement with political institutions, the movement is strategic and suitable for our purpose of exploring how values, activism and attitudinal outcomes are interrelated.

In the following section, we discuss theories about the value-attitude-action triad and develop hypotheses regarding the relationship between values, contexts of activism and attitudinal outcomes. "Data and Methods" section details data and methods, including operationalising the theoretical model into a recursive block structure, which allows analysing the complex set of hypotheses. "Results" section presents and elaborates the empirical results, and fnally, in "Conclusion and Discussion" section, we conclude and discuss the implications of the fndings for the literature on social movement outcomes for individuals.

## **Value Predispositions, Activism and Attitudinal Outcomes**

In general, questions concerning values and their role in the mobilisation process and for the strategies of movements, as well as the question of which values movement ideologies are concerned with, have remained understudied (McAdam, 1986; Walder, 2009). This theory section is guided by the very general theoretical model in Fig. 5.1 and explains how we theorise the relationships based on the existing literature. In doing this, we pay specifc attention to the indirect effects that are mediated by contexts of participation in activism and develop a set of hypotheses. Finally, the resulting fve hypotheses are summarised in Fig. 5.2.

Note: Solid lines indicate a positive relationship; dotted lines a negative one.

**Fig. 5.2** Overview of theoretical hypothesis

## *Values, Context and Attitudes*

Before considering theories of the relationship between predispositions, activism and attitudes, we briefy deal with defning, on the one hand, the predisposition of values and, on the other hand, the outcome of attitudes. There is no clear consensus on the concepts in the social sciences (van Deth & Scarbrough, 1995a), and to complicate matters, values and attitudes are often confounded (Schwartz, 2007). However, they can be defned as quite distinct. Following Schwartz's defnition, values refer to desirable goals that motivate action and transcend specifc contexts (Schwartz, 2007). In contrast, attitudes are specifc to issues, objects, actions and situations; they are thereby non-transcendent but tied to specifc contexts. Thus, across a variety of contexts, the same values may result in different attitudes, or as van Deth and Scarbrough put it, values are the '*underlying orientations*, which are relevant for or inform the process of, arriving at attitudes' (van Deth & Scarbrough, 1995a, p. 32).

However, not all values are equally important for attitude formation in all contexts, and which values are activated depends on the context. The competition is determined by the understanding of the given situation in which the actor arrives. This implies that values are ordered by importance relative to each other in any given context, which, according to Schwartz, is another characteristic that distinguishes them from attitudes. An attitude toward a given object, situation or event is not in competition with other attitudes. However, an attitude may be ambiguous when it combines more than one value activated in the given context.

This understanding of the relationship between values, contexts and attitudes suggests a process where values are transformed into attitudes in a specifc context.

However, in empirical studies of values' relation to attitudes or action, the contextual factor is rarely, if ever, considered beyond very general macro-context variation at the level of countries. In the following, we shall discuss how meso-level contexts of different forms of activism may mediate the relationship between values and attitudes.

## *The Mediating Role of Contexts*

Introducing the intermediate context of participation in movement activities adds a layer of complexity to the theory. On the one hand, we must consider how value predispositions relate to participation in activism and, on the other hand, how participation may infuence outcomes of changes in attitude. We deal with each step in turn.

We have already touched upon how values inform motivations for action. This has been confrmed in the literature on social movements. For instance, Dauphinais et al.'s (1992) study of 'Predictors of Rank-and-File Feminist Activism' concludes that predispositions are vital predictors of active versus non-active feminist activists. These fndings are supported by studies of other movements such as Barkan et al.'s (1995) study of the antihunger movement and Stern et al.'s (1995, 1999) work on environmental movements, and more recently Lahusen and Grasso (2018) published the edited volume *Solidarity in Europe*, which provides ample evidence of the close relationship between values, attitudes and activism (Fernández, 2018; see also Fernández G. G.'s contribution in chap. 4).

As argued above, values are mediated through different contexts, which are of consequence to participation (see also Passy and Monsch's contribution in chap. 6). Processes related to group culture and collective identity formation have been shown to have a substantial impact (Carlsen et al., 2021b; De Weerd & Klandermans, 1999; Klandermans, 2015; Klandermans et al., 2002; Passy & Giugni, 2000, 2001; Passy & Monsch, 2020), but emotional reactions have also been found to be very infuential (Gundelach & Toubøl, 2019; Jasper & Poulsen, 1995). Moreover, and of particular importance to the solidarity movement under study, encounters between activists and deprived others may forge solidary relationships that infuence future participation (Carlsen et al., 2020b; Maggini & Fernández, 2019).

Studies also suggest that values are not equally important to all kinds of movement participation. As suggested by McAdam (1986), we can think of recruitment and movement participation as a process beginning with movement activities that entail low levels of risks and costs before the activists gradually, often facilitated by a process of socialisation with movement goals and culture, move on to activism that entails higher risks and costs. When considering this distinction between lowand high-risk/cost activism, values appear to be particularly important to the initial stages of low-risk/cost activism, but when moving on to high-risk/cost activism, values tend to lose importance relative to processes of network embeddedness, socialising and learning processes (Dauphinais et al., 1992; Gundelach & Toubøl, 2019; McAdam, 1986). Such observations warrant closer scrutiny of the relationship between values and different contexts of activism.

In this study, we distinguish between three qualitatively different contexts of participation in the refugee solidarity movement that vary along the dimensions of (1) *contentiousness* concerning the degree of confrontation with other political actors, (2) *risk* concerning the individual risks of participation in the activities (Toubøl, 2017, 2019) and (3) *civil disobedience*. The frst kind of participation is the most common in the movement, namely, humanitarian activities that aim to alleviate the suffering of the refugees. Humanitarian activities stand apart by being both non-contentious (it is not per se related to a political confict, even though it might be) and low-risk. The second form of participation is political protest, a classical contentious form of activism that implies a low to medium level of risk. Finally, civil disobedience, such as helping refugees go underground or obstructing deportations, is contentious and high-risk. Elsewhere, we have argued for the substantial and theoretical relevance and meaningfulness of focusing on exactly these three kinds of activism in relation to the particular case of the refugee solidarity movement (Toubøl, 2017, 2019).

In relation to the values and types of activism under study, we frst hypothesise that (1) strong values of self-transcendence relate to strong engagement with the low-risk activism like humanitarian activities and political protest but do not infuence participation in high-risk civil disobedience because prior research has pointed to this kind of activism being the result of network embeddedness and related processes of socialisation (della Porta, 2018; Wiltfang & McAdam, 1991). Second, we expect that (2) values of conformity are negatively associated with participation in civil disobedience due to its inherent rejection of existing institutional orders and also political protest because that activity also constitutes a challenge to society's hierarchical orders and an unconventional extra-institutional approach to democratic institutions. This implies that we expect the non-conformists to participate in political protest and civil disobedience because they do not take society's traditional order for granted.

Turning to how activism produces outcomes of attitudinal change, the literature is scarcer. However, studies of biographical consequences of movement participation often have a change of attitudes and values at the centre (McAdam, 1988, 1989, 1999b; McAdam & Kloos, 2014). While there is a consensus that activism profoundly infuences the activists, the social movement literature is limited when it comes to formalised theories and models. However, other literature on the specifc attitudinal outcomes of this study, institutional trust and political views, have valuable insights to offer.

Following Max Kaase (1999), we view trust as relational, and therefore loss of institutional trust involves interaction between individuals and institutions. The interactions that constitute trust differ between different kinds of institutions. Bo Rothstein and Dietlind Stolle distinguish between *partisan* institutions, pertaining in this case to Parliament representing the political system, and *order* institutions like the legal system and the police (Rothstein & Stolle, 2008), which represent the oppressive state apparatus (Althusser, 1971) with which movements and activists

often fnd themselves in confict. A core distinction in relation to institutional trust is that citizens expect political bias from partisan institutions but impartially and neutrality from the order institutions. For partisan institutions like the Parliament, the interactions that constitute trust can be understood in terms of political effcacy (e.g., Craig et al., 1990; Pollock, 1983), in particular external effcacy, which is the political institutions' responsiveness to the activists' demands (not to be confused with giving in to the activists' demands). Thus, if experiencing non-response or lack of willingness to engage in debate and dialogue from politicians, even though the politicians and activist might disagree, it will likely lower trust due to the institution's lack of responsiveness. For order institutions like the police and legal system, trust stems mainly from the procedural aspects of justice rather than their perceived performance (Tyler & Huo, 2002). Therefore, what matters for trust in legal institutions are personal experiences of high levels of fairness in the exercise of legal authority even though the fnal verdict may go against oneself (Jackson et al., 2012; Nix et al., 2015).

For both partisan and order institutions, it all boils down to the fact that trust is constituted through interactions between individuals and institutions. Therefore, forms of activism that imply interaction with the particular institutions are more likely to result in a loss or gain of trust (gain is rarely observed in data and, therefore, not considered here). Political protest is a form of interaction with political institutions, and therefore we hypothesise that (3) participation in political protest activities will lower institutional trust, particularly in political institutions. It is likewise for civil disobedience, which, however, entails interaction with the order institutions of police and judiciary to a higher degree. Therefore, (4) we expect participation in civil disobedience to cause a loss of trust in political institutions, both partisan and order institutions. In contrast, humanitarian activities rarely involve direct interaction with political institutions. Therefore, we do not expect humanitarian activities to create changes in institutional trust.

Finally, we consider the outcome of a change of political view. This outcome is not tied to interaction with a particular institution but rather with engaging with a political topic. Social movement studies contain multitudes of observations of how participation in movements, including refugee solidarity movements (e.g., Cunningham, 1995), develops political consciousness and awareness through socialisation processes (e.g., McAdam, 1988). What seems to be the common denominator of activism involving altering political consciousness and views is the presence of a contentious dimension; that is, the meaning of the activities relates to a contested political topic (Carlsen et al., 2021b; Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003). Thus, we hypothesise that (5) the two contentious contexts of activism, political protest and civil disobedience, are positively related to a change of the political view of immigration.

Figure 5.2 sums up the complex set of hypotheses in a theoretical model that further unpacks the model's operationalisation presented in Fig. 5.1. It also hints at a need for a sophisticated statistical model, which we will explain in detail below.

## **Data and Methods**

We use a non-representative convenience sample collected in activist groups on the social media Facebook May–July 2016. As described elsewhere (Carlsen, 2019; Toubøl, 2017), the Danish refugee solidarity movement experienced a massive revitalisation during 2014 and, in particular, in relation to a wave of refugee migration through Europe in the summer and fall of 2015. Facebook groups were a central component in the movement's organisation, which allowed us to sample the movement activists from these groups, constituting our sample frame. We invited members to participate by posting invitations, including a link to the online questionnaire, in the groups. Also, from data accessed through the Facebook API, we were able to produce measures of the sample frame, which allows us to assess the sample's representativity.

We identifed 165 relevant groups, and in 150 (91%), we obtained permission to feld the survey. In addition, the survey was posted on 137 Facebook pages related to the movement. This resulted in a total of 2289 complete responses to the online questionnaire (51 question pages, median completion time of 22 min). To assess representativity, we compared the response sample to the sample frame of 28,304 Facebook users who were active in the groups during the period of the survey. From the social media data, we were able to produce two measures allowing us to compare representativity, namely, gender from a name classifer and a mean position on a political left-right scale from 'like' behaviour.1 The sample refects the sample frame, having a majority of women but also over-representing women with 84% in the sample versus 76% in the sample frame. The sample is also signifcantly more politically left-leaning with a mean of 3899 compared to the sample frame's mean of 4159 on a 1–10 points scale, even though the difference of 0.26 point is small. None of the biases is alarming, but the underrepresentation of men should be kept in mind when interpreting results where gender might be an important factor.

The survey is cross-sectional and does not allow for causal inference. However, we take advantage of the fact that a dramatic event took place on 5 September 2015 when a large number of refugees in an unregulated manner started crossing the border to Denmark, primarily from Germany. This became a dramatic national moment and was immediately followed by intense mobilisation and activity in the movement. This dramatic event allows for more reliable retrospective inquiry, and several items are constructed in ways that separate activities and level of movement participation and timing of involvement between, before and after 5 September 2015. This allows for including a time dimension in the models, although we still refrain from drawing causal conclusions but see the design as strengthening the reliability of the explorative fndings and consider our fndings as suitable for qualifying existing and suggesting new theoretically plausible hypotheses.

<sup>1</sup>For details regarding the procedures of producing these measures, please consult Carlsen, Ralund and Toubøl (2021b, 2021a).

## *Variables*

The dependent variables are created from survey questions asking if the respondent, as a result of his or her engagement, changed their level of trust in the institutions of Parliament, the judiciary and the police or changed his or her view of immigration in a positive or negative way.

Table 5.1 summarises the variables regarding institutional trust. In the analysis that follows, we consider only the difference between no change and a decline in trust and leave out an increase in trust because this event is so rare (with the exception of the police). The wording of the questions suggests that the responses refect a causal relationship between movement activity and loss of trust. Hence, the following analyses concern what variables relate to such a change in trust.

For the analysis, we combined the three variables into a scale measuring the number of institutions in which the respondent lost trust (summarised in Table 5.2). The scale conforms almost perfectly to the assumptions of a Mokken scale. Out of 2289 responses, only 127 (6%) do not conform to the Mokken scale hypothesis regarding data structure, and we drop these respondents from the analysis. Without these respondents, the items form a scale with Loevinger's *H* = 0.74. This indicates very high scalability, and consequently we adopt the scale of loss of institutional trust as our measure of attitudinal change toward political institutions.

The measure of the other dependent variable that measures attitudinal outcomes concerning changes of political view is binary. Those reporting no change of opinion (0) comprised 87%, and 13% reported having adopted a more refugee-friendly political view (1) as a consequence of their involvement with the movement.2

The focal independent variables of the value predispositions of self-transcendence and conformity are operationalised following different principles. Following Schwartz (Davidov et al., 2008), self-transcendence is measured by four items from the basic value orientations of universalism and benevolence. The items are adopted from the European Social Survey (ESS) and form an additive index with the principal range of 4–20. However, since the distribution is highly skewed, categories 4–13 have been collapsed, which results in a scale from 1 to 8. We also include a variable that measures self-enhancement values which may be equated with an


**Table 5.1** Distribution of answers to the question 'Have what you learnt and your experiences with the refugee cause changed your trust in the following institutions?'

<sup>2</sup>The questionnaire included the option that the respondent favored a more strict refugee policy as a result of participating in the movement, but virtually no one chose that option.


**Table 5.2** Construction of Mokken scale of loss of institutional trust

egoistic personality. We have not formulated specifc hypotheses regarding selfenhancement but include it nonetheless as an important control variable because, in Schwartz' theory, it represents a value opposite that of self-transcendence (Schwartz, 1992; Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987). Similar to the self-transcendence scale, the variable is measured by four items from ESS. The principal scale ranging from 4 to 20 has been recoded into a 1–7 scale to maximise variation and avoid too few observations in categories at the tails of the distribution.

Conformity is measured by a proxy, religious affliation with three categories: (1) active member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark or another Christian religious association (11%), (2) passive member of the church (34%) and (3) not being religiously affliated (55%).3 As Schwartz remarks, religious behaviour may be associated with values of conformity and tradition (Schwartz, 2007), but how to interpret this matter, we may add, depends on context. For instance, studies from the US sectarian religious tradition show that religious activity drives activism and, thus, rather than conformity, inspires deviance (Cunningham, 1995; e.g., Delehanty, 2020). However, the Danish religious landscape is far from sectarian.

The Danes have been characterised as people who are 'belonging without believing' (Storm 2009). On the one hand, the Danes have low religiosity (Evans & Baronavski, 2018), and Denmark has been characterised as the least religious country in the world (Zuckerman, 2008, 2009). On the other hand, 74% of the population are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark.4 However, churchgoing is low, and only one in six believes in a personal God (Andersen et al., 2019). The strong institutional position of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark is

<sup>3</sup>We have excluded religious minorities except for Muslims because the number of observations was too small to obtain valid estimates. The reasons are purely pragmatic and imply an important reservation with regard to generalisability of the results beyond the religious groups of Christians, Muslims and non-believers. However, because of few Muslim respondents, we cannot distinguish between passive and active Muslims, and we, therefore, cannot measure the level of conformity for this group. Thus, the value conformity regards only Christians.

<sup>4</sup>According to Statistics Denmark's records for the frst quarter of 2020: https://statistikbanken.dk/ statbank5a/SelectVarVal/Defne.asp?MainTable=KM1&PLanguage=0&PXSId=0&wsid=cftree (visited 17-12-2020)

due to its century-long state-sanctioned monopoly on religious enterprise. Furthermore, the church is a national symbol, and church membership has a central role as a sign of integration and belonging to the Danish national identity (Iversen, 2018; Iversen et al., 2008; Sundback, 2008; Warburg, 2008). This is, for instance, refected in the Danish name of the church, *Folkekirken*, which translates into 'The People's Church'.

Studies show the active membership in a dominant church is associated with conformity; that is, active members are more likely to trust key political institutions (Brañas-Garza et al., 2009; Kasselstrand et al., 2017; Kasselstrand & Eltanani, 2013), have more conservative political leanings (Esmer & Pettersson, 2007; Wolf, 2008) and respect authority (Proctor, 2006). Therefore, we assume that active membership in the church implies a relatively high level of conformity, while being a non-believer indicates a very low level of conformity because it is a breach of the membership norm, which, as argued above, not only relates to religious matters but perhaps even more to matters of national identity. Passive membership in the church indicates a level of conformity in between. The variables are treated as binaries. However, in the case of a minority religion, the relationship between religious affliation and conformity might be different. Due to this uncertainty, we restrict the measure to concern members of Christian churches in Denmark and add a control for association with the only religious minority of any substantial size in the population and sample, namely, Muslims. This has implications for generalisability and transferability of fndings related to conformity, which are only valid in relation to the dominant religion of the majority culture in contexts similar to that of Danish society.

The context in which values are activated and motivate activism that may lead to change in institutional trust and political views is measured by three variables assessing the level of participation in three types of activism: (1) humanitarian activity, (2) political protest and (3) civil disobedience (Toubøl, 2019). They are created from an item inquiring about the respondents' participation in 16 activities (summarised in Toubøl (2019), Table III) during and after the mobilisation that began in September 2015. The classifcation of the 16 activities into three categories is motivated by theoretical and substantive considerations, including detailed knowledge of the contents of the movement's activities from extensive feldwork (Toubøl, 2017). As explained in the theory section, we expect the three categories of activities to imply different patterns of interactions with the political institutions. Therefore, both constitute a direct relation to the loss of institutional trust and mediators of value predispositions' relationship with loss of institutional trust.

Finally, we add several control variables. Gender, age and level of educational attainment control for sociobiographic and sociodemographic factors. More specifc to social movement activity, we control for history of activism (Wiltfang & McAdam, 1991) before the mobilisation in September 2015, which is inferred from an item asking the respondents to report different forms of political participation before and after September 2015. Retrospective inquiry is diffcult in a survey, but given the iconic and dramatic status of the events in September 2015, the measure's reliability might be acceptable (Belli, 2014). Similarly, we ask the respondents if they were active in the movement before September 2015 or became active only during the mobilisation that followed. This provides us with a measure of embeddedness in the movement networks. The two measures serve as indicators of the level of socialisation of movement identity, values, views and beliefs, as well as learning of movement practices, including activism (McAdam, 1986; van Stekelenburg, 2017). Both ideational and practical socialisations may infuence risk and cost perceptions and, therefore, heighten the chance of participating in the more risky types of activism like civil disobedience (Ayanian & Tausch, 2016; Carlsen et al., 2021b; Gundelach & Toubøl, 2019). Finally, we include an index of the respondents' emotional reaction to the events in September 2015 summarising their emotional reactions in terms of (1) compassion with the refugees, (2) feeling responsible for the refugees, (3) anger toward the authorities lack of care for the refugees and (4) ashamed by the lack of a welcoming attitude in Danish society.

## *Statistical Method: Discrete Graphical Models*

For the statistical analysis, we use discrete graphical modelling. The model is based on a recursive block structural model designed to analyse the complex hypotheses regarding a mix of direct, indirect and mediated effects (see Fig. 5.2). The recursive block structure is depicted in Fig. 5.3, and the position of the variables in the structure is based on the theoretical considerations presented above. The logic of a recursive block model consists of the variables in block 1, the numerically lowest block, which are considered dependent on all other variables and the variables in the numerically highest block, in this case, block 4, that are independent of all other variables. The variables in the intermediary blocks are simultaneously independent of the variables of the numerically lower blocks and dependent on the variables in the numerically higher blocks. Thus, recursive block models allow for modelling

**Fig. 5.3** Recursive block structure

complex variable relationships and estimating models, including multiple dependent variables.

The block model is analysed as a chain graphical model (Lauritzen, 1996) that combines graphical theoretic analyses with Markov graphs. The statistical analysis is a probability-based adaptation of high-dimensional contingency tables based on the principles of classical elaboration analysis (Aneshensel, 2012; Davis, 1971; Lazarsfeld & Rosenberg, 1955; Rosenberg, 1968). The strategies and techniques of discrete graphical modelling and the DIGRAM software5 are described and developed by Kreiner (Kreiner, 1986, 1987, 1996, 2003).

In this paper, the order of the recursive blocks is based on the assumptions that are sketched in Fig. 5.2. The focal variables corresponding to the theoretical model of Fig. 5.2 are placed in blocks 1, 2 and 4 of Fig. 5.3. Block 1 contains the dependent variables, loss of institutional trust and political views of favouring more refugeefriendly policies. Block 2 includes the three kinds of activism. In block 4, we fnd the value scales of altruism and egoism and measures of religious affliation that we operationalised as proxies of conformity. Also, sociobiographic and socioeconomic controls are in block 4. The three control variables concerning the history of activism, embeddedness in the movement and emotional response are placed in an intervening block 3 as they might constitute contexts that mediate the value predispositions' relationship to the activity variables. The reason for this is chronology. Values are considered rather stable and, therefore, are most fundamental to the model. The movement embeddedness and history of activism variables concern the period before September 2015, and the emotional response concerns the dramatic events that started the mobilisation in September 2015. Therefore, they are chronologically before the activism variables, which measure participation during and after September 2015.

The advantage of the table elaboration techniques offered by DIGRAM is that it provides a nuanced analysis where the results may be presented visually. In contrast to the traditional regression type of analysis, the variable may be nominal, ordinal or interval scale properties, and it is possible to include several dependent variables, to combine directed and symmetrical relationships between the variables and to include all variables as well as interactions in the analysis from the beginning. The method has two limitations compared to regression analysis. First, the method does not make it possible to compute R2 or any other goodness-of-ft criteria to select among models. Instead, the analysis continues until the researcher fnds that the results are empirically and theoretically satisfactory. This kind of interplay between explanatory ideas and the examination of data is at the heart of data analysis (Tufte, 1974) and takes places in all kinds of multivariate analysis. Practitioners of regression analysis also 'play' with the data as an integral part of their research activity but rarely explicate their procedures and primarily justify their choice of model from goodness-of-ft tests (Ron, 2002). Instead, the DIGRAM software forces the

<sup>5</sup>A ZIP fle of the program, the user guide and examples of use may be downloaded from http:// publicifsv.sund.ku.dk/~skm/ (accessed 10 December 2020).

researcher to make the interplay explicit rather than relying on strict formal criteria for the model's ft to the data. The lack of a formal measure of goodness of ft leads to another limitation. The inclusion of all direct and indirect relationships between the variables results in a need to study a high number of relationships. When the model includes a large number of variables, the analysis may seem too complex and even incomprehensible. Therefore, the DIGRAM researcher—rather than performing data dredging (Bartels & Brady, 1993)—must limit the number of variables in the model and include variables only where theoretically plausible hypotheses between the variables may be explicated.

The overall strategy of analysis consists of three steps:


The fnal model includes direct as well as mediating relationships between the blocks. We present it graphically in Fig. 5.4 in the subsequent section, where we detail the results of the empirical analysis of the fve hypotheses.

## **Results**

The fve hypotheses can be ordered in two sets, which will structure the presentation of the results. The frst set consists of hypotheses 1 and 2 and concerns value predispositions' indirect effects through the contexts of the three forms of activism they may be activated in. The second set comprises hypotheses 3, 4 and 5 and regards

how different kinds of activism imply interaction with different political institutions, which may lead to a loss of trust in particular institutions.

The results of the analysis are depicted as a graph in Fig. 5.4. Lines with arrows indicate the direction of the asymmetric variable relationships, whereas other lines show symmetric relationships. Only statistically signifcant relationships are reported. Coeffcients are partial γ-correlations. To be clear, the dataset does not allow us to observe causal relationships, and we do not intend to make any causal claims based on the results. When we discuss the direction of asymmetric relationships, this is based on theoretical considerations.

## *Value Predispositions and Participation*

The frst set of hypotheses concerns which value predispositions are associated with participation in certain kinds of movement activity. Hypothesis 1 stipulated that self-transcendence values would positively associate with participation in humanitarian activities and political protest. In contrast, hypothesis 2 predicts that conformity would be negatively associated with political protest and civil disobedience. The results support both hypotheses. Self-transcendence values are positively associated with participation in both humanitarian activities and political protest. The non-conform respondents without religious affliation are more likely to participate in political protest, whereas the passive church-affliated Christians are very unlikely to participate in civil disobedience. Being an active church member indicates a high level of conformity which increases the relative likelihood of participating in

humanitarian activity compared to participating in civil disobedience and political protest.

Theoretically, the relationship between values, contexts and action can be interpreted in two ways, both of which may be correct. The frst theoretical interpretation assumes that values are prior to and infuence action. The subject of refugee solidarity and refugee rights in the context of the movement is evaluated differently based on the individuals' value hierarchy, which leads to different courses of action. Here the non-conform, self-transcendent person will construct the issue as a politically contentious struggle about justice for refugees, and the natural course of action is political protest and, subsequently, in rare cases, even civil disobedience. The conform person might construe the situation as concerning the suffering of unfortunate refugees but ignore the political level out of the basic propensity to trust and respect the authority of political institutions. In that case, the natural course of actions focuses on humanitarian activities that aim to reduce the suffering of the refugees.

In the second interpretation, the movement activities are not actions per se but are seen as the contexts that activate values. Here, the results tell a story of what values are likely to be activated in what contexts of the movement activities of humanitarian activities, political protest and civil disobedience, and the relationships between the variables are symmetric rather than asymmetric. Values do not lead to certain courses of action; rather, in certain contexts, certain values are activated.

Both interpretations are consistent with the theories, and both processes may be involved in generating the observed correlations. Our data, unfortunately, do not allow for separating the processes, assessing their relative validity and drawing frm conclusions.

## *Participation and Attitudes*

The second set of hypotheses concerns the relationship between movement participation and attitudes. Hypotheses 3 and 4 concern what kind of interaction with political institutions the different activities involve. The hypotheses stipulated that political protest would involve interaction with partisan institutions, causing a loss of trust, and civil disobedience would imply interaction with order institutions resulting in a loss of trust in these institutions. The results support both hypotheses. Political protest has a positive correlation with loss of trust at 0.15, and civil disobedience has a slightly stronger association of 0.20. Also, the strong symmetric association of a 0.48 partial correlation supports the hypotheses' claim that the two kinds of activities are entangled. Compared to political protest, civil disobedience has a slightly stronger correlation with the loss of institutional trust scale where 1 is the partisan institution of the Parliament and 2 and 3 are the order institutions of the legal system and the police. Thus, civil disobedience's slightly stronger correlation with loss of institutional trust supports the hypotheses that civil disobedience to a higher degree than political protest involves interaction with the order institutions of the repressive state apparatus and the associated loss of trust.

Our fnal hypothesis, 5, concerning a change in political opinion, is not supported. Neither participation in political protest nor civil disobedience is associated with a higher likelihood of change in political view regarding immigration.

## **Conclusion and Discussion**

In this study, we have explored the role of value predispositions for participation in activism and individual-level outcomes of movement participation in the form of attitudinal change. In line with mainstream theory on the value-attitude-action nexus, we fnd that values' possible infuence on outcomes of attitudinal change is mediated by the contexts of the actors: It is through the process of making meaning of the given context that certain values are activated and related to the issues at hand through a process of attitude formation. We show that certain values relate to certain specifc contexts of movement activity, either because they are activated in these contexts or because they inform attitudes that call for such action. In our case, the Danish refugee solidarity movement, we fnd that participation in contentious activism of political protest and civil disobedience, on the one hand, are both related to values of self-transcendence and non-conformity and, on the other hand, to outcomes of loss of trust in political institutions like Parliament, the legal system and the police. For the non-contentious context of humanitarian activities, however, we do not observe any relationships to outcomes of attitudinal change.

These fndings give reason to reconsider how we think of values and moral implications of movement participation and, more generally, take the context of values more seriously, both empirically and theoretically. The study goes beyond the notion that certain movements relate to certain values (Klandermans, 2015; Snow et al., 1986) and expands our knowledge by exploring how, within the same movement, different contexts of activism relate to values in different ways and, in turn, relate to different attitudinal outcomes.

Furthermore, the fndings suggest that movements may produce heterogeneity within themselves because activists participating in different parts of the repertoire constituting different contexts develop different attitudes to the issue and political actors with which and whom the movement engages. This, in turn, implies that the same movement may contain different competing values that denote different desirables that guide action. Thus, one of the implications is to take a more nuanced approach to movements and recognise that the often noted heterogeneous, unorganised and diverse composition of movements is a factor of consequence.

Because of its focus on how to bridge and align different frames understood as interpretive schemata that guide meaning-making, framing theory (Snow et al., 1986) presents itself as a relevant approach to address these issues. To strengthen a focus on rank and fle members' practices, which calls for situation centred, ethnographic approaches, the concept of scene style (Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014) readily presents itself as an important supplement. This concept invites us to investigate and explore how different contexts of movement participation can be understood as different scenes constituted of interactional styles. The cultures of different scenes bring certain values into play and relate them to various objects and issues that produce scene-specifc logics of action and habits of thought, shaping the moral selves of the involved actors (Carlsen et al., 2021b).

The observed heterogeneity of values and attitudes in different within-movement contexts also complicates the consequences of movement activity for society's basic values and moral foundations (Alexander, 2006; McAdam, 1988). In the case of the Danish refugee solidarity movement, a central internal issue of strife was whether the movement's goal was to change institutional politics pursued through contentious practices or whether it should focus only on humanitarian activities pursuing a prefgurative political strategy (Carlsen et al., 2020a; Vandevoordt, 2019). This debate was framed as a within-movement debate, and the participants recognised each other as belonging to the same movement (Toubøl, 2017, pp. 54–57). This within-movement division along the dimension of contentiousness (Carlsen & Toubøl, 2021) is also clearly observed in our analyses. It raises the question of whether these observed variations within the overall collective identity of the movement also result in different moral visions for society. While the humanitarian activities of the movement were not associated with any of the attitudinal outcomes included in the analysis above, it still seems likely that such activities involved collective identity formation that may serve as a moral template or vision, not just for the activists involved but also in the wider society (Melucci, 1989).

The insight that what goes on at the interactional level in different parts of a movement has implications for values and attitudinal outcomes is relevant for value studies in general. Empirical research into values is dominated by survey studies. However, the survey method suffers from its long-standing weakness with regard to measuring respondent contexts (Barton, 1968; Carlsen et al., 2021a; Cicourel, 1964; Coleman, 1958), which results in an epistemological paradox in the sense that theories of values stress the consequential role of contexts, but empirical studies rarely include reliable measures of context. While this study also is limited when it comes to measuring contexts, it does provide evidence that this omission is problematic. Hence, studying and conceptualising the shaping of the moral self in different contexts and situations are pending tasks for students of values, attitudes and activism. This task is further complicated by the fact that movement contexts—both in the sense of contexts within the movements and the political institutional and cultural contexts that the movement is embedded in—are not constant, but dynamic (e.g. Tilly, 1986). While this approach is beyond the capability of the present paper, which is based on cross-sectional data, it is a highly relevant perspective for future studies based in longitudinal data to grasp such dynamic developments of contexts and their implications for individual-level participation and shaping of the activists' morality.

## **References**


Davis, J. A. (1971). *Elementary survey analysis*. Prentice-Hall.


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# **Chapter 6 For a Better Living-Together: Ongoing Meaningful Conversations at Play**

#### **Florence Passy and Gian-Andrea Monsch**

**Abstract** This chapter provides two contributions. On the one hand, it argues that morality is a mine feld for sociologist as they lack the analytical tools to judge what is moral and what is not. Yet, historical sociology has shown that morality is bound to culture, and accordingly culture and cultural practices should gain the center stage of the sociological work on morality. Further on, we claim that social movements scholars can show that specifc contentions directly relate to major political cleavages where major debates about moral issues are staged.

Our second contribution offers an empirical example of such a research agenda. Using original survey and interview data on pro-migrant's rights activists and environmentalists, we show that activists from these two groups form a common community—the moral voicing community. They share an understanding of the social problems they are committed for. Activists from both groups judge as immoral when specifc social or cultural groups lack basic rights or suffer from environmental devastations and interpret these assessments through a prism of injustice. Finally, we show that these shared meanings on our living-together are continuously constructed through a specifc relational mechanism. Indeed, ongoing and direct conversations are necessary to maintain those shared views and to ultimately sustain their activism.

**Keywords** Morality · Conversations · Shared meanings · Culture · Pro-migrant · Environmental activism

Lisa, a woman of 30, is highly committed to the defense of migrants' rights. For almost 10 years, she has been involved in an association of jurists who offer legal aid to new arrivals. She also participates in other pro-migrant groups to fght what she perceives as an "obscene injustice" on a political level. "They encounter so many problems when they try to acquire a right to remain or to work elsewhere than in their home country. […] If I compare my situation to theirs, it's clear that there is an obscene injustice: basic rights are denied." Nathan, a 30-year-old man, mobilizes to promote environmental sustainability. Nathan became passionate about

University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

© The Author(s) 2023

F. Passy (\*) · G.-A. Monsch

e-mail: forence.passy@unil.ch; gian-andrea.monsch@fors.unil.ch

A. Sevelsted, J. Toubøl (eds.), *The Power of Morality in Movements*, Nonproft and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98798-5\_6

ecological activism when completing his studies in Finland. On his return to Switzerland, he joined Greenpeace to pursue his commitment, which he perceives as a matter of justice: "I am very concerned with the consequence of human activity on the environment. […] And we are not all equal in terms of environmental destruction. The same goes for global warming: developing countries are much more affected by global warming than frst world countries are. Switzerland will have enough funds to cope with foods or hurricanes, but this is not the case for Bangladesh and many other poor countries."

Lisa and Nathan are two examples among many of what we could label "moral" commitment. Lisa spends time and energy to do unto others, while Nathan fghts for our environment. Both struggle to achieve a better living-together. In many cases (not all), contentious politics is engaged in "moral" issues. Political battles to enlarge rights are examples of such issues. To improve the rights for migrants, women, poor people, or LGBT people, all constitute moral battles that aim to promote people's well-being in society. Similarly, political struggles to secure living conditions, such as peace movements or environmental ones do, are other examples of "moral crusades" carried by contentious politics.1 Many questions arise when contention and morality are linked. In this contribution we focus on two specifc questions. First, what is the work of sociology when it investigates morality? Second, how can we bridge contentious politics to the sociology of morality?

In this chapter, we will argue that morality is embedded in culture. Indeed, morality is a cultural construction embedded in social relations, institutions, and human practices. This means that cultural practices shape meanings available in a specifc social site and time period, which fashion the individual toolkit that enables us to think, construct, and act. Along this line, and in a second step, we will argue that political battles, perceived as "moral," are aligned on social cleavages. Cleavages are constructed around distinct views of our living-together, around distinct "moral" principles. They rely not only on a social and political basis but also on cultural pillars that confgure distinct conceptions of our living-together and our understandings of society.

Placing culture at the heart of our sociological work on morality implies that sociologists should investigate morality in its cultural practices, a position that opens several research avenues. For example, how are moral issues culturally framed? How do cultural components partake in the construction of those issues in a specifc space and time? More precisely, at the collective level, we could examine what meanings are available in a specifc society (or group) that enable the construction of moral issues in a given context. At the individual level, we can ask what "individual cultural toolkits," to borrow Swidler's words, and allow individuals to perform joint action to improve our living-together (Swidler, 1986).

Our contribution focuses on this last research avenue. We empirically investigate the cultural toolkits at individuals' disposal to perform joint action on behalf of migrants, as Lisa does, or to promote ecological sustainability, as Nathan does. This

<sup>1</sup>The term "moral crusades" is borrowed from Jasper (1997).

leads us to question *what meanings are present in the activist's head* that enables them to perform political altruism and environmental action in a specifc time and society: present-day Switzerland. Our central question can be specifed into three interrogations. What meanings do activists committed for migrants and ecology hold onto? To what extent are those subjective understandings shared by activists involved in the same commitment community and on the same side of a political cleavage? And fnally, how are these perceptions of the social world constructed in the activist's mind?

Our data having been collected at one point in time and during the activists' action, we scrutinize the meanings activists hold onto once they are committed, and we examine how talks and ties within a commitment community enable activists to maintain their views about society and serve to sustain commitment over time. This ultimately means that we do not analyze how understandings emerge prior to or after commitment.

Before we launch into an examination of the activists' subjective world, we begin with a brief discussion on morality and the challenges it presents to sociologists. We follow this by considering a research avenue for social movements scholars who tackle issues of morality. Then, after some methodological information about our study relating to data collection and analysis, we present our fndings on the activists' minds and the role of conversational interaction within the commitment community on the activists' mental world. We conclude by addressing further research avenues both on the study of the minds of activists and the study of morality for social movements scholars.

## **Morality Embedded in Culture**

We often use the term morality (e.g., moral action, issues, frames, crusades) in sociological research and in the study of social movements. If we look up a defnition in a dictionary, morality differentiates action (but also motives, intentions, decisions) judged as proper to those deemed improper. Morality is therefore a set of principles (standards, norms, or codes) that guides human action. These codes of conduct derive from a particular philosophy, religion, or culture and enable judgment between moral and immoral actions. But what is moral and immoral? What kinds of action are assessed as proper or improper? This is a major problem for sociologists, who are ill-equipped to formulate such assessments.

Not surprisingly, after reviewing sociological works on morality, Bargheer and Wilson (2018) rightly argue that we lack a clear and substantive defnition of what we understand by morality. Defnitions are both vague and not consensual, leading to disagreements about what we are supposed to study when we study morality (Bargheer & Wilson, 2018).

If defning morality is the frst problem sociologists encounter, the second relates to a key tension in the studies on the topic: that between universal principles and moral standards embedded in cultural contexts. Are moral principles universal rules of behavior or are they context-dependent and therefore subject to change over time and from one culture to another? In the discipline of philosophy, this contradiction is relevant. For example, for Hume morality emerges from experience and is essentially social. Therefore, morality depends of social and cultural contexts. Similarly, for Hegel morality is thoroughly embedded in cultural context, and he was among the frst to relativize the conception of morality and to think about morality as a nonfxed category. By contrast, Kant thinks moral principles should be universal laws that apply to all humans across time and culture, a universalism Aristotle shares. Both consider moral standards, such as kindness goodness, fairness, or rightness, as universal rules that apply to all human beings.

This dividing line is also present in sociology. Historical sociology understands morality as a socially and historically constructed category. Martin (2017) argues that the true, the good, and the beautiful are not universal even within the history of Western thought, but culturally constructed categories that emerged during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the Western world. The historical perspective in sociology is rife with studies that emphasize that what is considered as moral is actually a social construction (see Abend, 2011; Joas, 1997; Keane, 2015; Lamont 1992). By contrast, following Parsons' structure-functionalism, studies on human values apprehend beliefs as universal categories. For example, Inglehart's work on values change (Inglehart, 1977, 1997; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005), Rokeach's (1978, 2008) on human values, and Etzioni's (1988) on moral values rely on a universalizing account of values and morality.2

The absence of a common defnition "might indicate the multifaceted and multidimensional nature of morality that calls into doubt the possibility of designating such a thing as a static and clearly demarcated entity that can be called the 'moral self' (Chazan, 1998) or the 'moral dimension' (Etzioni, 1988) of social life" (Bargheer & Wilson, 2018, 3). The historical perspective, as well as anthropological work, makes us aware of the notion that universal categories cannot exist in human societies: they are cultural constructions. The way we conceive of common good (Geuss, 2001; Miller, 2004), the human being (Somers, 2008), money (Lamont 1992), or selfhood (Keane, 2015) varies from one society to another and from one historical period to another, and these categories are fashioned by social relations, social dynamics, and institutions.

Historical sociology offers three key fndings (Bargheer & Wilson, 2018, 7). First, the relation of moral to non-moral evaluation is contingent over time. For example, during centuries in the Western world, same-sex relations were morally condemned, while today they are not. Second, what it means to be a moral person depends not only on moral evaluations but also on how these evaluations intertwine and structure the self. Finally, the relationship between moral evaluation and the self is structured by and structures institutions. Morality is culturally embedded in social relations, institutions, and human practices. Simply put, *morality is bound to culture*.

<sup>2</sup>We also fnd a universal understanding of morality in political theory (Taylor, 1989), in psychology with Piaget (1932) and Kohlberg (1967), in contemporary social psychology (e.g., Bratanova et al., 2012; Darley & Shultz, 1990; Reed & Aquino, 2003), and in neuroscience (Liao, 2016).

Our work as sociologists, then, consists in investigating morality in its cultural practices. Many avenues for research are accordingly opened for social movements scholars. As stated above, at the collective level, we can examine what are the cultural meanings available in a specifc society (or group) that enable the construction of moral issues seized by contentious actors. At the individual level, we can analyze what cultural toolkits individuals possess and that allow them to perform joint action to improve our living-together. We here follow this second research avenue by frst investigating what meanings lie behind the performance of contentious action. Second, we examine whether these meanings are shared by activists involved in the same commitment community and whether they rely on what we call a "synchronized mind." Finally, we examine how those mental cultural constructs are maintained and serve to sustain commitment.

## **Morality, Contention, and Political Cleavages**

Jasper (1997) qualifed the political battles for human rights, minorities' rights, peace, or for the environment as "moral crusades." As argued above, sociologists are ill-equipped to normatively defne those political battles as moral ones. By contrast, social movements scholars know that contentious battles are directly connected to broader social struggles (see Toubøl and Sevelsted in the introduction of this volume). Beyond single-issue protests like the ones just listed, contentious politics stems from social and political cleavages that address "moral" issues. More precisely, we can say that such cleavages are bound to social dilemmas that can metaphorically be called "moral" dilemmas.

Lipset and Rokkan (1967) underscore that the European political space is structured along social and cultural fault lines whereby major social conficts organize the political universe of each society. Following their work, Bartolini and Mair (1990) study class-cleavage and render us attentive to the notion that a cleavage relies on social, cultural, and political bases and generates specifc shared meanings on either side of the divide. It mobilizes specifc social categories, as the cleavage around the working class has shown in Western political space since the nineteenth century. In brief, the class-cleavage is structed around the redistribution of resources and capital on one side of the cleavage and a free-market economy on the other. Finally, social conficts are transformed into politics when collective actors politicize the dividing line, leading to the formation of political groups around the defense of their conceptions of society. In the case of the class confict, this cleavage politically opposes left and right organizations. A political cleavage thus mobilizes specifc social segments of society, concepts of living-together, and political groups.

Two major cleavages can be said to structure the political space in contemporary Western societies (Kriesi, 2010). The class-cleavage is one of them. Yet since the 1960s, a new political cleavage has been emerging (Flanagan, 1987; Flanagan & Lee, 2003; Kitschelt, 1994; Kriesi, 2010). This cleavage is referred to through various terminologies, such as "post-materialist/materialist" (Inglehart, 1977; Inglehart & Baker, 2000), "libertarian/authoritarian" (Kriesi, 2010), or "libertarianuniversalistic/traditionalist-communitarian" (Bornschier, 2010). It opposes distinct classes and social categories of the middle class and mobilizes distinct views about our living-together (Kriesi, 1993; Passy, 1998a). One side of the cleavage mobilizes individuals who share what Hooghe et al. (2002) call green, alternative, and libertarian conceptions of society, mobilizing people who want to protect and enlarge individuals' rights, liberties, and self-expression and who advance alternative models to make our living style and economy more sustainable. The other side of the cleavage is embodied by individuals and groups that rely on traditional, authoritarian, and nationalist understandings of society. This new cleavage ultimately mobilizes new left parties and what Melucci (1989) called "new social movements" groups (also termed "left-libertarian" or "post-industrial movements"). Lisa and Nathan, and activists like them who fght for human rights, ecology, and peace, are mobilized on the green, alternative, and libertarian side of this recent political cleavage. Their political battles pit them in opposition to individuals and collective actors who promote rights in relation to a national community and claim that traditional economical models are better suited to social well-being.

As with the class-cleavage, this post-industrial confict incorporates issues linked to social justice, equality, fairness, and rightness. These are typical social or "moral" dilemmas. Both cleavages deal with questions about how we want to live together as a community, and this living-together can be improved. With the analytical tools of sociologists, we cannot argue whether one side is more appropriate morally than the other. But we can argue that specifc contentions, like the one Lisa and Nathan are committed to, relate to those major political conficts directly.

A cleavage, then, is culturally based on shared meanings that enable people to mobilize and politically engage in battles for what they see as a better society. The political struggles, the aim of activist commitment, are seized with distinct subjective lenses. In this chapter, we scrutinize the shared meanings that enable activists like Lisa and Nathan to commit to a better living-together. And we ask, what cultural toolkits allow them to mobilize on the left of the libertarian cleavage? We also ask how shared views on society and our living-together are linked to contentious politics possible. Indeed, how do interpersonal networks and ongoing conversations that take place within activist commitment communities enable the maintenance and ongoing construction of shared meanings as well as joint action to be sustained?

## **Meanings and Conversations**

The mind is a thinking and perceiving "inner box" composed of interconnected nodes of meanings and complex mental processes such as memorization, attention, or information retrieval (Fiske & Taylor, 2013; Jasper, 1997; Passy & Monsch, 2020; Searle, 2004). Here, we focus on one specifc part of the human mind:

meanings.3 We use the terms meanings, worldviews, perceptions, or understandings interchangeably, while intellectual traditions rooted in other epistemologies would prefer concept such as values, attitudes, or even cognitions. Meanings, as we approach them here, are hence subjective representations that enable individuals to relate to their social environment, to make sense of it, and to orient their actions.

Meanings set human intentionality, which enables action (Searle, 2004; Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). As Zerubavel (1997) points out, action is improbable without meanings (see also Weber, 1978; Mead, 1934). The human mind is central to the performance of individual and collective action.

But what kind of meanings enables people to perform contentious action? Social psychologists recognize the existence of domain-specifc knowledge necessary to a performance (e.g., Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fiske & Taylor, 2013). This means that individuals do not rely on general knowledge but on a specifc one, delimited by a feld of experience (e.g., Fine, 1979; Fine & McDonnell, 2007; Hirschfeld & Gelman, 2004). What is the domain-specifc knowledge required to perform contention? *Activists must make sense of the aim of their commitment*: they elaborate mental constructs of the social problem they commit to.4 To do so, they elaborate specifc worldviews about society and common good, and we accordingly argue that activists construct a specifc relation to common good mentally.

How shall we defne common good for our purposes? We rely on a pre-liberal tradition of common good derived from Aristotle, and that seizes common good as an *objective good* that enhances people's lives and benefts *all members of society*. Common good relies on two analytical dimensions: commonness and goodness (Murphy, 2005). Commonness refers to the possibility that an entire community shares a good. It helps understand how individuals relate to society. Thanks to an inductive analysis presented below, we identify three sub-dimensions that enable people to make sense of commonness: interconnectedness, which seizes how activists perceive the social ties that bind individuals together; humanness, which apprehends the way activists perceive human beings; and fnally inclusiveness, which delves into subjective boundaries that individuals may erect between themselves and others. These dimensions allow us to examine whether activists committed in the left-libertarian community, and who struggle alongside the post-industrial cleavage, rely on a communitarian or universalist conception of society (Kymlicka, 1995; Taylor, 1994; Walzer, 1997; Young, 1990). The second dimension of common good, goodness, pertains to the perception of the goods that objectively improve people's living conditions. Social problems can be seized in two different ways: through an ethics of justice and an ethics of care (Aristotle., 1988; Gilligan, 1982). This

<sup>3</sup> In *Contentious Minds*, we also examine a second part of the human mind: how meanings are tied to action (Passy & Monsch, 2020).

<sup>4</sup>Activists must also make sense of their *means of action*, the means that enable them to bring their claims on the political stage. Due to space constraints, we here focus only on the aim of the activists' commitment. For more information on this political dimension, see Passy and Monsch (2020, Chap. 5).

dimension enables us to assess whether activists committed in the left-libertarian commitment community seize the good they mobilize for in terms of justice or of care.

How do activists in the left-libertarian commitment community make sense of the common good? And do they rely on shared understandings on commonness and goodness? These are the questions we examine empirically. So far, we have used the term "the activist's mind." Yet the individual mind is a social one: the mind is a social optic constrained by social gates that shape our consciousness. As Zerubavel states: "I experience the world not only personally, through my own senses, but also impersonally, through my mental membership in various social communities" (Zerubavel, 1997, 7). Otherwise put, not personal meanings but social ones. Similarly, Tilly (2001, 39–40) states:

Humans live in fesh-and-blood bodies, accumulate traces of experiences in their nervous systems, organize current encounters with the world as cognitions, emotions, and intentional actions […] However, the same humans turn out to interact repeatedly with others, renegotiating who they are, adjusting the boundaries they occupy, modifying their actions in rapid response to other people's reactions, selecting among and altering available scripts, improvising new forms of joint action, speaking never-uttered before sentences, yet responding predictably to their locations within webs of social ties they themselves cannot map in detail […]. We live in deeply relational worlds. And if social construction occurs, it happens socially, not in the isolated recesses of individual minds.

Relational sociology, at the heart of Tilly's work and our perspective, clearly stresses that we are embedded in ongoing relational interactions and that these shape the minds of individuals. Activists are, like other individuals, embedded in various social spheres, and their interactions therefore take place in various social sites. While the spheres of the personal, professional, and that of friends provide activists with cultural meanings about their commitment (Passy & Giugni, 2001), the commitment community in which they are involved is certainly the key social site in which meanings about the aim of their contentious commitment are elaborated.

But how does it work? How are shared meanings constructed and maintained in the activists' mind? Once activists join contentious activism, they join a specifc commitment community and evolve in a particular social environment. Commitment communities are networks of groups, more or less institutionalized, connected to each other through social ties. These ties can be strong or weak, but they assure ongoing interactions among collective actors that create a community of interests and meanings (Diani, 2007). Yet commitment communities are not only structural platforms bound by instrumental ties. They are "islands of meanings," to borrow White's terminology. For White (1992), social networks are composed of stories, meanings, talks, and identities exchanged through ongoing interactions (Mische & White, 1998). White's perspective helps us understand how activists can share common meanings: through talks and ties, the activist's mind is enriched with and transformed by meanings derived from the networks they belong to. Talks and disputes lead activists to synchronize their understandings regarding the aims of activism convey in their commitment communities, including meanings about common

good—relative to the aims of activism—which synchronize with those of their peers: a process that allows them to construct shared meanings that, in turn, enable them to perform joint action. Ultimately, these talks and disputes among fellow activists create the network itself (White, 1992).

Integration in a commitment community therefore enables activists to synchronize their minds with their peers. However, these communicational interactions take on various forms, as we will see in the empirical part of this contribution. Indeed, not all social interactions lead to a synchronization of views. Specifc relational mechanisms are here at work, and these vary in their effects.

## **Studying Meanings and Conversations**

In-depth interviews and survey data from a comparative study we conducted in Switzerland between 2009 and 2012 allow us to examine meanings and conversations in detail (see Passy and Monsch 2020).5 We consider them among activists from Solidarity Across Borders (SAB) committed to the defense of migrant's rights and from Greenpeace Switzerland (GP). Activists from these two organizations defend starkly different political issues but belong to the same commitment community. We call it the "moral voicing community" because they are involved in what we could call the defense of "moral" issues (Jasper, 1997) and are both part of the post-industrial movement that mobilizes on the libertarian-authoritarian cleavage (Della Porta & Rucht, 1995).

We have already encountered Lisa from Solidarity Across Borders and Nathan from Greenpeace above. While we illustrate our argument through both cases, systematic data backs up our analysis: a total of 16 interviews or 64 h of conversations with SAB and GP activists, as well as representative survey data.6 This comparison affords us the opportunity to scrutinize the main questions addressed in this contribution: what meanings inhabit activists in the moral voicing community? Do they have a shared understanding of common good? And how do social interactions sustain shared meanings within the community? Are direct interactions necessary or are mediated interactions suffcient to shape the activist's mind? We further have two control groups to test whether the way activists from the moral voicing

<sup>5</sup>The Swiss National Science Foundation fnanced the research project on political altruism "Why Stand Up For Others?" (Nr. 100017-122246).

<sup>6</sup> In this chapter, we restrict the empirical demonstration due to space constraints. First, we only present interviews from SAB and GP activists. We exclude data from activists from the Society of Threatened Peoples mostly for their redundancy with the cases presented. For the same reason, we only present six out of eight possible cases for SAB and GP activists. We excluded two similar cases (one active and one passive member) within each organization. Finally, we use mostly two cases to illustrate our argument with citations: one active member from SAB (Lisa) and one from GP (Nathan). We choose these two cases not because they suit our argument but because they are representative of the activists interviewed. Their citations which illustrate our arguments are therefore based on the whole interview corpus.

community conceive of our living-together in a specifc way. The frst is constituted by another community: the workers' voicing one, which is concerned by the defense of their workers' rights, here represented by unionists from UNIA, the largest Swiss union for employees in the private sector. The second is constituted by the Swiss general population.

We rely on interview data because of the three inherent strengths it presents. First, it enables an in-depth understanding of the meanings altruists have in mind. Interview data reveals complexity, interconnections, and sometimes ambivalences of human perceptions. Second, the qualitative material helps develop the theoretical dimensions related to common good further by enabling induction. Third, interview data allows us to make sense of the relational mechanisms at stake, how conversations work, and what they mean for the activists. In other words, it is to grasp how meanings are transmitted through talks and disputes.

We pre-selected individuals for interviews based on available information from the organization (gender, age, profession, and commitment intensity). The aim of this procedure was to achieve heterogeneity within the target population. We hence opted for a systematic and theoretically inspired sample before data analysis.7 As with the selection procedure, the interview was standardized. We conducted two interview sessions of about 2 hours with every activist. Inspired by the framework of psychoanalytical interviews (Kvale, 1999; Lane, 1972), both interviews were open conversations with minimal intervention on our behalf. These extensive interviews sought to apprehend the complexity of meanings such as whether the relation to common good matters and to what extent or the part played by social interactions. We then developed a systematic analytical framework inspired by the classical interpretative approach (Denzin, 1989; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Paillé & Mucchielli, 2005). Finally, we elaborated a fne-grained process that started from the transcribed interviews to progressively rise in analytical generality while retaining the possibility of returning to the interviewee's words.8

In addition to the interviews, we gathered original survey data that offers two important benefts: generalization and a systematic comparison between activists of different organizations and the general population. We distributed a self-administered web-pencil questionnaire including questions borrowed from general population surveys9 and gathered a response rate of between 18 and 44%.10 Such response rates obviously made us question the representativeness of our data. Socio-demographic indicators (gender and age) obtained from the organizations tell us we produced

<sup>7</sup>This should not be confused with a theoretical sampling using an iterative approach as carried out within the grounded theory tradition (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Kuzel, 1999; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Patton, 2001).

<sup>8</sup>For a more detailed description of our treatment of interview data (selection, interviews, analysis), please refer to Passy and Monsch (2020).

<sup>9</sup>We used indicators from the World Values Survey (WVS 2007), the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP 2004), the Swiss Electoral Studies (Selects 2007), and the European Values Study (EVS 2008).

<sup>10</sup>We work with response rates of 44% for SAB, 25% for GP, and 18% for UNIA.

representative samples for Solidarity Across Borders and Greenpeace. Yet, this socio-demographic control does not tell us whether our samples are representative in terms of activists' understandings and interaction patterns. We assume that activists willing to respond identify with and participate in their organization more than those who refused. This means that our samples are representative for activists who identify with their organization but that we probably have a slight bias for activists who pay only a small annual fee or contribute on an irregular basis.11

With this original data in hand, we can assess the cultural toolkit at the disposal of activists. Yet we do not show how these meanings orient the action of activists here.12

## **Shared Meanings for a Better Living-Together**

How do activists perceive the society they live in? What meanings enable them to defend migrant's rights or the environment? And do activists of the moral voicing community have a distinct understanding of our living-together? Earlier, we conceptualized their relation to common good as referring both to the notion that inaccessibility to objective goods can be seized either as a social justice or care problem (goodness) and as the idea that an entire society can share a good (commonness). We divide commonness into three further sub-dimensions: interconnectedness, which apprehends the importance of ties within society; humanness, which focuses on the understanding of human beings; and inclusiveness, which looks at the frontiers erected between social groups. Together, commonness enables us to assess whether moral voicing activists develop a communitarian or universalist conception of society.

Pro-migrant's activists like Lisa and environmentalists like Nathan have a strong sense of *interconnectedness* between members of society: both believe in the importance of the social ties that bind us together and stress the interdependence between individuals and groups. In their minds, we are all interrelated, a perception that relies on solidarity and social trust:

For me, it's crucial to do things for others, but also with them. What one does alone is of no interest. […] For example, post-partum depression is essentially due to the isolation of women. It's really important for our inner equilibrium to be tied to others. In this sense, the organization of family has to be totally rethought; we should reinvent it in a much more open form. (Lisa)

If you don't trust others, you become an individualist who worries about your own fate and interests. It's important to trust others and show solidarity and we must strive to strengthen bonds regardless of nationality. Pollution in one country has an impact on the environment elsewhere, and advances in protecting the environment in one country beneft us all. (Nathan)

<sup>11</sup>A more detailed description can be found elsewhere in our work (Passy & Monsch, 2020).

<sup>12</sup>See Passy and Monsch (2020).

Lisa and Nathan not only have a common vision of interconnectedness, but they also share an essentialist view of *humanness*. Human beings share the same needs and desires independently of their country of origin. Lisa illustrates this when she states that all humans must be treated the same way:

People who come to this country are humans like me. But we don't consider them to be human beings. This drives me crazy! I grew up with the idea that all humans have the same value and the same rights.

Nathan shares this essentialist notion of humanness but, in line with his commitment, includes nature in this view:

We should connect human and nature together. If we don't bind humans to nature, we will face tremendous problems. For me, it is a major concern. Too often, we oppose human beings to nature. We don't have to choose between saving humans or saving nature; both can go hand in hand.

Lisa and Nathan do not erect boundaries between people, which is the fnal dimension of commonness: *inclusiveness*. Lisa and Nathan hence share their understanding of commonness, and both rely on a universalist conception of society:

I have the right to have a visa to go anywhere, to be able to leave a country as I want. For those migrating here, this is impossible. They have so many problems acquiring a right to remain or to work elsewhere than in their home country. As human beings, we have the right to move and live where we want. We live in the same world, we should have the same rights.

As I see it, we should act against poverty here, in Switzerland, but also everywhere in the world. I think that we should respect people's diversity. We must respect people who are different from us and show solidarity with people who are not from our community, our family, or who are not necessarily like us.

Do they also share a common notion of the good they are committed to (*goodness*)? For defenders of migrant's rights, commitment is clearly a question of social justice, as Lisa explains:

Settlement right should be granted to any human being. I can settle where I want, easily receive a Visa for travelling, enter and leave a country without problems. For migrants, it's just impossible. They fee their countries and face dramatic situations, then are ejected from wherever they arrive. They have so many problems in getting residence and work permits. If I compare my situation to theirs, it's clear that there is an obscene injustice. Basic rights are denied.

Environmentalists also perceive common good primarily in terms of social justice. With Nathan, this is articulated in relation to waste production:

I am very concerned with the consequence of human activity on the environment. For example, waste is a serious problem. We solve it by sending our surplus to developing countries. We are told that our televisions and computers are sent to developing countries to be recycled, but that process is a very harmful one for the environment and for people. It's unbearable; we send tons of electronic equipment to landflls in developing countries where people can't afford computers!

Similarly, Nathan mentions the fact that effects of global warming are not felt equally, another major injustice in his view. This is doubled by generational inequality, as the next generations will have to live with the inaction of the present one—a further injustice.

Although committed to different political issues, Lisa and Nathan conceive of commonness and goodness in the same way. They relate to common good as a universal social justice and think our living-together should be organized around equal access to goods for all. Are Lisa and Nathan exceptions? Is it a coincidence that the other SAB and GP activists interviewed share this understanding of common good?

To answer this question, we look at survey data from activists of the moral voicing community, unionists and the general population (Table 6.1). We present one indicator for interconnectedness and fve indicators for inclusiveness.13 We dispose of only one proxy for the interconnectedness dimension: trusting unknown others.14


**Table 6.1** Commonness perception within the moral voicing community

(continued)

<sup>13</sup>We can only present one proxy for interconnectedness and no indicator for the dimensions of humanness and goodness. The reason for this is that our argument results from both a deductive and inductive approach. Theoretical elaboration helped us conceptualize most of our concepts. However, individuals' narratives allowed to grasp meanings connected to those concepts. Humanness, interconnectedness, and goodness emerged through induction, and we therefore did not operationalize these concepts for the questionnaire.

<sup>14</sup>The exact question wordings of all indicators are provided in the note of Table 6.1.


#### **Table 6.1** (continued)

Note: *SAB* Solidarity across borders, *GP* Greenpeace

To evaluate social trust, we asked the following question: "Could you tell us whether you trust …?" Individuals who trust completely or somewhat their neighbors and people they meet for the frst time were merged into the category "unknown others," and those who trust people of another religion and nationality were merged in the category "distant others" (Comparison with the Swiss population: World Values Survey 2007). The indicator helping others was measured through the question: "How important is it for a good citizen to help others in the world?" On a 7-point scale, only people who found this very important (six or seven) were included (International Social Survey Programme 2004). Boundaries with cultural minorities represent an index of people who are culturally different based on the question: "This list presents various groups of people. Could you please sort out those you would not like to have as neighbors?" Included are Muslims, Jews, Sinti people, and migrants (European Values Study 2008). For the self-extension scale, we used the following question: "Several motivations can characterize your commitment. Maybe all the motivations presented below partially characterized your commitment. However, can you tell us which one constitutes the central motivation of your commitment, and what is the motivation coming in the second position?" Four items, adapted to the organizations, were presented to the respondents where two intended to measure self-extension and two boundaries. Self-extension items were the following: (1) "We live on the same planet, it is normal to act for others?" (SAB, GP), (2) "I want everyone, migrants, and non-migrants to have the same rights" (SAB), and (3) "I want to protect the planet, its environment, and its biodiversity" (GP). Boundary items were the following: (1) "I defend migrants because I (or my family) was a migrant" (SAB). "I, my next of kin, or my family are directly touched by environmental problems" (GP). (2) "I want to improve [the social justice/ the environmental quality] of the society in which I live in, i.e., Switzerland" (SAB, GP). *χ2 compares activists with the Swiss population as well as collective actors between each other* \**p* < 0.05

<sup>\*\*</sup>*p* < 0.01 \*\*\**p* < 0.001

Trust toward unknown people is certainly a basic component of interconnectedness (Rothstein & Uslaner, 2005); it hones in on the perception of social ties. As for inclusiveness, fve indicators seize the idea that people do not set mental boundaries between their own social groups and others. Two comparative indicators assess activists' trust in people of another religion and nationality, as well as the importance to help people beyond Switzerland. Next, we present an index of cultural minorities (e.g., Gypsy people, Muslims) that respondents would not want as neighbors. In addition to these items that allow for comparison with the general population, we developed a measure for self-extension that was inspired by Inglehart's scale of post-materialism with four items, whereby two measure self-extension and two others the boundaries between activists and the groups they are committed in.

Table 6.1 provides evidence suggesting that we can generalize the fndings provided by the interview data. What frst stands out is that moral voicing activists perceive interconnectedness in a particular way. More moral voicing activists trust unknown others than unionists and the general population (SAB with 74% and GP with 55% compared to UNIA with 37% and population 45%). Furthermore, active and passive members do not differ from each other (see Table 6.1). A similar perception among activists from Solidarity Across borders and Greenpeace is present; both perceive society as interconnected with individuals that are tied to one another. The survey data hence confrms that activists within the moral voicing community share a common understanding for a better living-together.15 In addition, we can show that their understanding is specifc and differentiates that of the moral voicing community from that held by unionists and the general population.

Table 6.1 also shows that moral voicing activists have a highly inclusive notion of society (inclusiveness), and this perception appears yet again as particular when compared to unionists and the general population. Many more moral voicing activists than people from the control groups think that distant others can be trusted and that helping others beyond Switzerland is important (see *χ*2 comparisons in Table 6.1). In addition, very few of them set boundaries with cultural minorities. While a third of all unionists and among the general population (34%) would not want to have Muslims, Jews, Sinti people, or migrants as neighbors, only 6% of defenders of migrant's rights and 17% of Greenpeace activists erect such a mental frontier. Finally, the self-extension scale confrms the higher levels of inclusiveness among moral voicing activists. Almost everyone from this commitment community selected self-extension as a frst motive to explain their commitment, whereas this is only the case for half of all unionists.

The survey data show us that moral voicing activists have a specifc understanding of common good, one we have described as a universal social justice perception. Activists from the moral voicing community are synchronized in their mental outlook. The survey data systematically shows that active and passive members within an organization do not differ from each other. By contrast, SAB activists seem to be

<sup>15</sup>Data on activists from the Society of Threatened People who defend minorities' rights also confrm our conclusion that the moral voicing community relies on a shared meaning of common good (Passy & Monsch, 2020).

somewhat more homogeneous than GP activists. More defenders of migrant's rights trust and help others and set fewer boundaries than environmental activists. As we have argued elsewhere, a reason for this might be that activists who defend migrant's rights are committed to a more challenging issue than environmentalists at Greenpeace (Passy & Monsch, 2020). Nevertheless, the survey and interview data show that they have a shared understanding of living-together. The moral voicing community can hence be said to constitute an "island of meanings" (White, 1992), offering a distinct cultural toolkit on the libertarian side of the cultural cleavage. In the next section, we will explore how these meanings are constituted through interactions.

## **Meanings Through Conversations**

How is such mental synchronization possible? In this section, we take a closer look at the role interactions play and compare direct and mediated or non-personal interactions. Are direct interactions necessary to shape the activists' mind? Or are mediated ones suffcient? To begin with, we examine the activist's *relational reality* or whether moral voicing activists enjoy other interactional opportunities beyond Solidarity Across Borders and Greenpeace.

First, we consider activists' embeddedness in formal networks in addition to their respective organizations. As shown in Table 6.2, about more than half of all activists participate in other organizations of the post-industrial movement. A large proportion of moral voicing activists therefore enjoy other conversational opportunities within their commitment community. In addition, opportunities for social interactions abound in their interpersonal networks. The second part of Table 6.2 demonstrates that at least 90% of all moral voicing activists state that their interpersonal network is sensitized to the social problems addressed by their commitment community. This testifes to the fact that almost all activists have an environment where they can discuss and deploy the cultural toolkit provided by their commitment community. Friends or family members also provide such opportunities to exchange in a more intimate and frequent manner. Another important fnding is that passive members have a similar relational context. While they are not actively committed, their interpersonal network also includes people sensitized to their commitment community. Passive and active members hence enjoy broad conversational opportunities. But do they really exchange meanings and opinions?

Active members organize public events and demonstrations, are part of committees and working groups, or are involved in organizational activities. By making routine use of the cognitive tools available in their respective organization, their minds are nurtured with new ideas and synchronized. As we see in Table 6.3, all active members interviewed have face-to-face interactions with other active members within their respective organization, and all stressed the importance of these conversations in their interviews. Lisa became aware of the plight of migrant through such conversations:


**Table 6.2** Current embeddedness in formal and interpersonal networks

Note: *SAB* Solidarity across Borders, *GP* Greenpeace

We measured activists' embeddedness in formal networks with the following question: "Here is a list of associations/groups. Could you tell us if, today, you are committed to these associations?" embeddedness in informal networks is measured with the question: "Would you say that your close friends, acquaintances, and family members are sensitive to, or aware of, the problem of [migrants' rights; autochthonous population rights; environmental protection]?" for each type of network (close friend, acquaintances, neighbors, co-workers, and relatives), we asked how sensitive people were to the social problem using a 5-point ordinary scale

\**p* < 0.05 \*\**p* < 0.01 \*\*\**p* < 0.001

> I learned a lot when I joined the organization—how to provide legal aid to asylum seekers, for example. But I also became aware of various migration issues, such as the awful living conditions of asylum seekers and state violence against migrants. Actually, I learned, and still learn a lot, from the volunteer lawyers. It's nice, but also extremely informative. Those exchanges obviously shaped, and still shape, my understanding of what the defense of migrants' rights is, and more generally what the real problems of migration and asylum are.

For Nathan, these exchanges are primordial. For example, in relation to protest tactics during organizational trainings:

I participated in trainings organized by Greenpeace. I took part in a course about nuclear power during which they told us about all the problems generated by this type of energy. I also took part in a course that showed us how to behave during a protest. I learned how to deal with bystanders, the police, etc., how to remain non-violent. The training took place over a week-end.

For active members, communications within their organization are an important sphere of interaction. But all active members enjoy similar conversations in their intimate network (Table 6.3). Nathan tells us how important a friend was to his environmental commitment:


**Table 6.3** Current communicational interactions of active and passive members within the moral voicing community

Note: *SAB* Solidarity across Borders, *GP* Greenpeace

"X" (bold capital letter) highlights direct communicational interactions (or face-to-face interactions), and "x" (lowercase letter) mediated communicational interactions (via the organization newspaper/newsletter)

I became a member of Pro Natura because a friend of mine who is close to environmental issues talked to me a lot about Pro Natura. So I went on their homepage and checked out what they do and can do. This is the same friend with whom I started my commitment at Greenpeace. I think our exchanges reinforced my ideas. We discussed a lot and progressively we started participating at local Greenpeace meetings, we motivated each other, I guess. It's diffcult to explain but we had the same ideas, and this reinforced our ideas and what we wanted to do.

Active members interact regularly and intensively both within the organization and within their interpersonal network. But what about passive members? As shown by the survey data in Table 6.2, most of them have a sensitized interpersonal network. But do they really interact with those friends and relatives on topics related to their commitment? Table 6.3 provides evidence that this is indeed the case. They exchange ideas and practice cultural tools from their commitment community within their interpersonal network. Colette, a passive member of various moral voicing groups, explains how important interactions in her interpersonal network are:

I met Jacqueline at my workplace; she was a lab technician like me. She and her husband were committed to defending human rights their whole lives. We became friends straightaway. We have many views in common and above all, a concern for justice. Actually, I supported many political battles thanks to them, such as the Anti-Apartheid movement and Amnesty International. Manon and Fernando, another couple of friends, help people in developing countries. And for several years now, they have been committed to improving children's education in Colombia. We all share the same ideals. They are really good friends, and we debate politics and our commitments on a regular basis.

Maria, a passive member of Greenpeace, also regularly mobilizes her cultural toolkit with her sister:

My little sister was an active member of Amnesty International. I can't remember what she did exactly, but I remember her participating in meetings quite often…And she also was a passive member of Greenpeace. She explained this a lot.

Real exchange occurs when passive members have friends or relatives who are sensitive to their commitment. But why then do passive members remain just that, passive? Three possible explanations come to mind. First, a lack of biographical availability. However, statistical fndings do not support this hypothesis.16 Second, as shown elsewhere (Passy, 1998a, 1998b, 2003), active members tend to recruit new active members. But our statistics show that passive members are rarely recruited by active members (Passy & Monsch, 2014). Finally, perceived personal effcacy in bringing about social change increases an activist's level of commitment. The analysis of survey data shows that passive members are less confdent than active members in their potential to effect change (Passy & Monsch, 2020).

Most active and passive members are embedded in social networks and specifcally interpersonal ones. This embeddedness allows them to practice the scripts available in their commitment community and synchronize their views for a better living-together. We saw that activists are concretely engaged in exchanges, interactions, or quarrels with fellow activists, in their interpersonal network, or both. But are such direct interactions necessary for mental synchronization to occur?

Another path capable of shaping the activist's mind is *mediated interactions*. These interactions are indirect as they comprise a non-personal interaction, as the reading of newspapers and newsletters published by the organization. Direct interactions, by contrast, defne interactions between individuals regardless of the means of communication (in presence, by telephone, internet, etc.). The organization's written production diffuses meanings, stories, and collective worldviews that might come to shape the activist's mind. But do such mediated interactions lead to synchronized views with other activists? Theoretically at least, the minds of passive members depend more on such interactions: passive members support the organization through money, but do not engage in direct interactions with active members of the organization (as shown in Table 6.3). However, the interpersonal network of passive members is sensitized or committed (Tables 6.2 and 6.3). The question now becomes whether mediated interactions can also shape the activist's mind or if direct interactions are needed.

To address this, we must frst examine whether activists read the written material produced by their organization. Indeed, almost all passive members interact with

<sup>16</sup>Three indicators weaken the argument about the lack of biographical availability. First, only in Greenpeace do active members have fewer children at home than passive members (Pearson's *r*, −0.24\*\*\*). Second, active members work to the same degree as passive members. Third, only in Greenpeace are there fewer unmarried active members than passive members (−0.25\*\*\*).

their community in this way. About 80% of them regularly read the material produced by the organization they support.17 But do those mediated interactions shape their minds? The role of mediated interactions in shaping activists' understanding of common good cannot be addressed due to the fact that a large part of passive members have discussions within their interpersonal network about their commitment issues (see Tables 6.2 and 6.3). However, one critical case can provide some perspective. As shown in Table 6.3, Yves is a Greenpeace supporter with no formal ties to his community. He is not a member of other moral voicing groups and has no friends, acquaintances, or relatives who participate in moral voicing activities. Yves is hence isolated from his commitment community. Yves' only interaction with the moral voicing community is channeled through Greenpeace written material. We know he regularly reads the organization's newspaper and that this reading enlarges his knowledge about environmental issues:

Before I started reading the Greenpeace newspaper, I wasn't aware of nuclear waste, renewable energies, or about over-fshing and its consequences. I learn many things reading the newspaper.

But do these mediated interactions lead Yves to synchronize his understandings of a better living-together? No, his understanding of common good is not one that can be categorized as in line with universal social justice:

I travelled a lot as part of my work. This showed me how different we are and that Switzerland is on a top-tier level. India, for example, we gave them modernity without a manual. It's extremely chaotic there. And they have a culture that is really different from ours. The untouchables, they run over one on the street, and don't even stop. In Switzerland, it's really different, we are among the best. We have a good social security system, we have no security problems. And it by travelling that you become aware of that. For example, I was in Cape Town, this was really different, another world.

As the above clearly demonstrates, while other passive member's views are synchronized with the moral voicing community, Yves's is not (Table 6.3). He never engages in direct interactions about his commitment and, consequently, does not have opportunities to practice the cultural toolkit available in his commitment community. The capacity of mediated interactions in infuencing the activist's mind hence seems limited. While organizational material can provide knowledge on contentious issues, it is inadequate to synchronize the minds of activists outside of a commitment community. For the latter, direct interaction in interpersonal or formal networks is needed. Public opinion studies confrm this interpretation and emphasize the weakness of mediated information to affect an individual's opinion (Huckfeldt & Sprague, 1995). Many studies have stressed the role of interpersonal networks in the integration of opinions mediated by newspapers, radio, or television, especially so when interpersonal networks convey ideas, concepts, or worldviews that deviate from one's own opinions (Huckfeldt et al., 2004). Direct communication with peers in an interpersonal network is hence necessary if an individual is to process, accept, and integrate opinions.

<sup>17</sup>See Passy and Monsch (2020).

Two conclusions can be drawn here. First, *mediated interactions are insuffcient* to synchronize an activist's mind. This relational mechanism is unable to synchronize activists' understandings and does not allow enough practice of cultural scripts available in the organization. This remains true even in cases of long-term commitment. Yves has been engaged in mediated communicational interaction for over 7 years, yet his understanding of common good still does not overlap with that of other moral voicing activists. The second conclusion relates to *the crucial role of interpersonal networks*. For passive members, interactions in interpersonal networks are central as they enable these members to synchronize their views with those of other members in their commitment community. Direct conversational interactions allow them to effectively practice cultural scripts from their commitment site and to synchronize their understandings. Direct interaction in informal networks is hence a key relational mechanism that shapes the minds of passive members.

## **Conclusions**

We aimed to provide two main contributions in this chapter. The frst was to situate the study of morality within sociology. We came to the conclusion that sociologists are not well equipped to judge what is moral and what is not. Indeed, sociologists lack the analytical tools for such normative judgments. By contrast, historical sociology has shown that morality is bound to culture and consequently that culture and cultural practices should be placed at the heart of sociological work on morality. Next, we showed how social movement studies could be bridged to sociology of morality. Contentious politics mobilizes on social and political cleavages that address "moral" issues and conceptions of living-together. While sociologists cannot show which side of a cleavage is "morally superior," we can demonstrate that specifc contentions directly relate to major political cleavages and that common perceptions of our living-together circulate within these. Our frst contribution therefore revolves around the way to seize morality with the tools of sociology.

Our second contribution showed an empirical demonstration of how this could be realized. Three key fndings guide us: frst, activists of the moral voicing community understand the social problems they are committed for in terms of a universal social justice. They judge as immoral when specifc social or cultural groups lack basic rights or suffer from environmental devastations and interpret these assessments within a register of injustice. Second, such a relation to common good is shared within the moral voicing community. Moral voicing activists have a synchronized mind and look in the same political direction. This shared cultural toolkit allows them to mobilize on the leftist side of the libertarian cleavage. Finally, we show that these shared views on our living-together are constructed and maintained through a specifc relational mechanism. Ongoing and direct conversations in their commitment community, and especially in their interpersonal networks, enable activists to maintain those shared meanings and ultimately to sustain their joint

action. Simply put, we showed how ongoing meaningful conversations sustain activists' meanings and enable them to mobilize on specifc political cleavages to promote a better living-together. However, we could not here develop the link between mind and action, an issue we have dealt with elsewhere (Passy & Monsch, 2020).

The aim here is to discuss the role of morality for movement studies. We agree that a cultural approach can help us advance the study of individual mobilization and try to show that in the study of activists' minds, examining meanings central to sustain participation is a worthwhile analytical endeavor. Whether this line of research should be called the study of morality or the moral self remains to be seen.

Two avenues for future research are worth mentioning. The frst is related to the study of the impact of commitment on the mind in a more dynamic fashion, animated by the following questions: how does commitment shape the mind once activists join a new community? Do activists already join a community with a fullfedged cultural toolkit, or do activists acquire the meanings necessary to sustain commitment incrementally? How long does the synchronization of views take? Such questions cannot be answered with the static research design used here but require a longitudinal one that considers data before and after people start their commitment, as well as variation between organizations and individuals. Variation brings us to the second possible research avenue. This contribution looks at a specifc country and is restricted to the libertarian side of this cleavage. Are the same processes at stake in meaningful conversations across countries, time, and between different cultural sites? Or are they universal? A promising research agenda is ahead of us.

## **References**


Denzin, N. K. (1989). *Interpretive biography. Qualitative research methods* (Vol. 17). Sage.


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# **Part III Rationalisation and Justifcation**

# **Chapter 7 Justifcation, Values or Concerns? Pragmatist Theories of Morality and Civic Engagements in Local Urban Greenspaces**

#### **Troels Krarup**

**Abstract** Much scholarship on social movements builds on (American) pragmatist ground. However, Boltanski and Thévenot's (French) pragmatist theory of justifcation has received less attention. The theory promises a way to bridge between American pragmatist social movement studies and theories about universal human values and repertoires of engagement, such as Shalom Schwartz'. Upon presenting and discussing the French theory of justifcation, the chapter sets out to assess its analytical usefulness in relation to a national survey on civic engagements in local urban greenspaces in Denmark. The survey questionnaire includes measures for each of the 'justifcatory regimes' distinguished by the theory. However, contrary to expectations, the results indicate a strong tendency for all eight justifcatory regimes to correlate positively. Moreover, an index combining the eight measures into one variable correlates strongly with civic engagement in local urban greenspaces. On this basis, it is suggested that the measures capture a more conventionally situated American pragmatist 'concern' for greenspaces. In conclusion, the theoretical as well as methodological implications of studying concerns rather than justifcations are discussed.

**Keywords** Morality · Justifcatory regimes · Boltanski and Thévenot · Urban greenspaces · Civic engagement

## **Introduction**

A considerable portion of classical and contemporary social movement studies builds more or less explicitly on (American) pragmatist ground, emphasizing situated engagements and relational processes of social formation in line with the three critiques addressed in the introduction to this volume, calling for more attention to (a) the interactions around moral identity formation, (b) the dynamical relationship

© The Author(s) 2023 A. Sevelsted, J. Toubøl (eds.), *The Power of Morality in Movements*, Nonproft and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98798-5\_7

T. Krarup (\*)

Technical University of Denmark—DTU, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: tmakr@dtu.dk

between morality in social movements and in broader institutions and culture and (c) moral emotions (Touraine, 1992; Alexander, 2006; Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014; McAdam & Kloos, 2014; Jasper, 2018). However, there has been only limited dialogue with the (French) pragmatist theory of justifcation and moral engagements (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006; Thévenot, 2014). In this chapter, I explore how a deeper dialogue between the two may nourish the aim in this volume of rethinking morality in relation to social movements and, more broadly, political civil society. While opening with a broad theoretical discussion, the main contribution of the chapter lies in the attempt at designing a questionnaire survey capable of seizing the kind of situated moral engagements in civic life conceptualized by the French pragmatic theory of justifcation. In turn, the survey data are used to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the theory of justifcation for the study of civic engagements, using various kinds of statistical analysis. In other words, the chapter can be read from two complementary perspectives. From the perspective of (pragmatist) social movement studies, the chapter presents, assesses and discusses an interesting approach to morality and moral engagements—the French pragmatist theory of justifcation. Reversely, from the perspective of the French pragmatist theory of justifcation, the chapter presents a frst systematic attempt at designing a questionnaire survey in accordance with its approach (which has so far been deployed predominantly in qualitative research). Moreover, from a broader societal perspective, my modest hope is that the survey design and approach to the quantitative analysis here may provide policy makers and the broader public with less reifed research about social movements, capable of nuancing dynamics of morality, context and agency.

The motivation for bringing in French pragmatism can be illustrated by contrasting two American pragmatism's perspective on civic engagement with an infuential non-pragmatist alternative. Again, American pragmatism emphasizes situated action, problem-response iterations and the codes of (symbolic) interaction that govern group dynamics. By contrast, Shalom Schwartz's theory of ten fundamental human values (including, 'achievement', 'hedonism', 'benevolence' and 'tradition') provides a universal schema claimed to ground all political attitudes and engagements and to provide a key for understanding social and political conficts (Davidov et al., 2008). Contrast this perspective with American pragmatist C.W. Mill's word that: 'There is no explanatory value in subsuming various vocabularies of motives under some terminology or list. … To simplify these vocabularies of motive into a socially abstracted terminology is to destroy the legitimate use of motive in the explanation of social actions' (Mills, 1940, p. 913). French pragmatist theory is interesting because it offers an intermediate model based on a limited list of culturally and historically specifc 'justifcatory regimes'. When engaging in public life, actors can tap into these regimes as a kind of templates for how to re-state one's personal inclinations and dispositions into publicly legitimate arguments including a reference to a public good (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006). In other words, French pragmatism shuns unsituated universalism while retaining a focus on the grammars and repertoires available to actors in their civic engagements.

Following the discussion of the French pragmatist theory of justifcation and its relation to American pragmatism in the next section, I move on to the development of a situation-sensitive questionnaire for the study of justifcations—specifcally in relation to local greenspaces in Danish cities. Local urban greenspaces (UGS) are interesting because they are the loci of various forms of everyday use and practices, on the one hand, and of broader social and political issues and contestations, ranging from personal recreational value to city-specifc questions of urban planning and to global environmental issues, on the other hand. In other words, local urban greenspaces afford loci of multiple and complex mediations of justifcatory practices, all the while remaining situated—thus refecting a broader interest in the motives and engagements underlying civic action and social movements (Frederiksen et al., 2014; Sevelsted, 2018; Toubøl, 2019; Carlsen et al., 2020). While social mobilization around rural areas and issues is certainly also important, cities present an interesting object of research in their own right. The questionnaire is used in a national survey among the Danish urban population (*n* = 1.130).

Factor analysis reveals positive correlations among all the variables operationalizing the justifcatory regimes and no clear separation of different latent dimensions, whereas the theory would suggest clustering of a few regimes ('compromises') in contrast to other such clusters ('conficts'). This result also predominates both in the multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and in the correlational class analysis (CCA), although the latter does display weak signs of secondary differentiation. Based on this result, I suggest shifting the conceptualization of the measures from one of justifcation to one of concerns with the overall issue—local urban greenspaces. I then proceed to assess the explanatory power of an index of concern based on the eight variables on civic engagement in local urban greenspaces. Finding a strong and statistically signifcant correlation, I conclude that the notion of concern overall provides the best account of the results. In the concluding discussion, I consider different aspects of the apparent challenges to Boltanski and Thévenot's theory of justifcation. First, I consider the possibility of a statistical artefact (respondents reacting differently than expected to the questionnaire). While possible, I argue that this remains a challenge to the theory itself as well. I then turn to a consideration of the different methodological implications of conceiving the issue, respectively, in terms of justifcatory regimes and concerns. I argue that the latter demands a methodological framework that is more attentive to the confictual, contradictory and problematic aspects of concerns in a specifc situation than afforded by the generic scheme of coherent justifcatory regimes. On this basis, I outline an agenda for future research.

## **Two Variants of Pragmatism**

Broadly speaking, American pragmatism emphasizes the importance of 'situation' and focuses on the 'problems' and 'concerns' that motivate people to act. It exhibits less interest in what something *is* in itself and instead explores how it *works* in a given situation. It generally favours iteration and abductive modes of inquiry. In the social movements literature, it is not exactly commonplace that scholars declare

themselves to be fag-bearers of specifc philosophies. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile for our purposes here to note the widespread deployment of pragmatist principles in the literature. For example, there is a focus on how different kinds of language are used to mediate between different kinds of situations. Alexander (2006) argues that the civil sphere requires individuals and groups with particular experiences to employ universalist language in order to be generally accepted in a community. In turn, Eliasoph and Lichterman (2003) argue that even universalist moral languages (such as that of individualism) are always applied situationally. Jaspers aims at a new understanding of emotions in social movements, not as the irrational counterpart to cognition but as parts of complex processes involving different trade-offs, temporalities and even contradictions. More broadly, social movements are seen not as isolated domains of society but as a social activity through which cultural representations cast conficting images of society in a constant production of itself (Touraine, 1992).

French pragmatic theory, inaugurated with Boltanski and Thévenot's (2006 [1991]) *On Justifcation: Economies of Worth*, shares many concerns and intuitions with its American counterpart, although of course borne out of a different intellectual climate with its reference points in Durkheim, Mauss, Bourdieu and structuralism, rather than Parsons, Dewey, and Lazarsfeld (Boltanski, 2011; Thévenot, 2014). Boltanski and Thévenot modelled their notion of justifcation to mediate between ordinary people's situated disputes and the claim to universality of the moral repertoires employed in such disputes (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2000). By describing a universal 'grammar' for justifcation and identifying a limited number of justifcatory repertoires that can be mobilized in everyday disputes, they sought to avoid naïve relativism in favour of inquiries into the ways in which justifcation is anchored in 'reality tests', the engagement of object of 'qualifcation' and practices of 'evaluation'.

With *On Justifcation*, Boltanski and Thévenot thus initiated a new moral sociology—the pragmatic sociology of critical capacity (Blokker, 2011). Their core assumption is that when people encounter diffculties in realizing their personal goals, ideals or affections in contact with the social world, they may engage in justifcatory practices in order to legitimize their course in dialogue, negotiation or confict with others. In so doing, they draw on a fnite number of justifcatory regimes available to them as a kind of cultural grammar. Each of these schemes has been formed historically and fulfls a number of a priori criteria that qualify them as legitimate forms of justifcations, including reference to a common humanity, a principle of differentiation and a common good (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006, pp. 74–76). Through the formulation of arguments in such terms, they are raised to a level of generality (*montée en généralité*) at which they are potentially acceptable to other people as more than individual idiosyncrasies or personal interests (Blokker, 2011). Where other theories of justifcatory repertoires (Walzer, 1983; Elster, 1992) linked worth to distinct social spheres, Boltanski and Thévenot insist on the generic nature of their justifcatory regimes and that they can, consequently, be mobilized by different actors across different social situations. Thus, as a kind of grammar for justifcatory practices, the theory is said to avoid cultural relativism (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2000).

The theory distinguishes eight regimes of justifcation (Thévenot et al., 2000; Boltanski & Chiapello, 2006; Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006; Lafaye & Thévenot, 2017). These are summarized in Table 7.1. For example, in the 'market' regime, worth is essentially measured by price in the competitive market. Adam Smith is the canonical fgure here. The logic is that the rich must have some qualities attractive to many other people, making them want to trade at a proftable rate. The social image of the worthy in this regime of justifcation is the tradesman or trader. The common good claimed to be produced is, as in Adam Smith, wealth in society. However, there is also a sacrifce that must be made for people to obtain worth and which makes the favourable social position of the 'big' people (*les grands*) legitimate. In the market regime, the sacrifce that must be made is self-restraint, that is, control over one's own immediate desires in order to re-focus efforts on how to satisfy the desires of others (and to make a proft from doing so). However, the sacrifce in itself is not enough to legitimize grandeur. There has to be a concrete, situated test of grandeur. In the market regime, this test is the exchange situation, which will prove whether or not the person seeking to achieve grandeur (wealth) has sacrifced enough and in the right way. It is not coincidence if this sounds a lot like classical economics (e.g., Fisher, 2012 [1930]).

Boltanski and Thévenot's theory of justifcation affords an interesting framework for the attempt at (re-)invigorating morality in social movement studies and political


**Table 7.1** Eight regimes of justifcation

Sources: Boltanski and Thévenot (2006)

a The term 'social image' is not used by Boltanski and Thévenot, but these are some of their recurring examples

b Thévenot et al. (2000), p. 241)

c Boltanski and Chiapello (2006) civil society studies more broadly. Indeed, the theory has had some success in parts of the sociological literature on public contestations, for example, to study processes of social coordination in which different actors (e.g., city planners and activists) are engaged in debates, negotiations or protest involving argumentation, justifcation and critique (Thévenot et al., 2000; Blokker, 2011; Silber, 2011; Blok, 2013; Holden & Scerri, 2015; Centemeri, 2017; Eranti, 2017; Lafaye & Thévenot, 2017; Luhtakallio & Tavory, 2018; Salminen, 2018; Thévenot, 2019). This literature suggests that in the case of Nordic city planning, a precarious 'compromise' has been reached between 'market', 'industrial', 'civic' and 'green' regimes (Blok & Meilvang, 2015, see also Wachsmuth & Angelo, 2018).

The literature applying the theory to social movements and civic engagements has so far been mainly qualitative, European, and focused on contestations of urban space and on environmental disputes, but the theory obviously claims a much broader scope. For social movement studies, the theory presents a model for the kind of socially legitimate language(s) that individuals and groups may employ to advance their course in the public (cf. Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003; Alexander, 2006). It also provides a spectrum for analysing how alliances, compromises and conficts between different regimes of justifcation may take place at a larger scale in a given society under the infuence of social movements among other things (Thévenot et al., 2000; Boltanski & Chiapello, 2006). Moreover, it does so on a pragmatist basis, emphasizing situated engagements and an instrumental analysis of social reality.

Given that the theory emerged as a critique of Bourdieu's sociology and as an attempt to 'free' the actor from the constraints of social structures and habitus, it is not surprising that it has been met with critique for ignoring social structures, power and interests (e.g., Fligstein, 2006). However, internal critiques have also been raised, such as the incapacity of the seemingly universal requirement of appeal to a 'common humanity' to account for openly racist forms of justifcation (Godechot, 2009). However, my main concern is more methodological—that the theory involves a risk of artifcially 'recognizing' its 'list' of 'vocabularies of motives' (Mills, 1940, p. 913). Moreover, how are we to deal with variations within each regime? For example, what do we do with apparently similar discourses about 'the market' that are organized around radically different problems (Krarup, 2019) or with different responses to the same fundamental problems related to 'the market' (Krarup, 2021a, see also 2021b)? The theory refers such variation to 'compromises' *between* regimes, but in the cited studies, variation stems from tensions and paradoxes intrinsic to 'the market'. Thévenot's own work on green justifcation reveals substantial variety and complexity in terms of what counts as 'green' (Thévenot et al., 2000; see also Blok, 2013). Reversely, Boltanski and Chiapello (2006) argued that a distinct new regime emerged from a compromise between previous forms. In these cases it becomes somewhat blurred what the relationship is between the apparently ideal (or idealized) regimes of justifcation and the more muddy reality of social practice. Or, as John Levi Martin (2017) would ask, are the regimes real phenomena or are they rather heuristic conceptual tools for the researcher? Following the somewhat disappointing result of the statistical analysis below, I therefore suggest that rather than maintaining an ambiguous distinction between regimes of justifcation, on the one hand, and situated controversies, issues and problems, on the other hand, it may be more fruitful to develop an integrated notion of concerns or, more generically, problems.

## **Questionnaire and Analytical Strategy**

The material analysed consist of 1130 survey responses from a national representative study among Danish residents between 18 and 84 years old in cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants. The sample was drawn randomly from the national register of social security numbers (CPR), and the survey was carried out by Statistics Denmark (the National Bureau of Statistics). Respondents were sent a questionnaire (see below) by a special public emailing service used by state institutions such as tax authorities to communicate with Danish citizens (e-Boks). Non-respondents and partial respondents were contacted by phone and urged to complete the questionnaire. The response rate is 29.4% (counting only full responses and including persons from the sample with secret address and the like that prevented contact). This is fairly low and may imply problems of representativity. However, the analysis in this chapter is not so much about making inferences from the sample to the population as it is to identify different justifcatory patterns in the data. Certainly, representativity problems may imply that some patterns are overlooked, but they should not affect the patterns that are found.

The questionnaire was developed by the author and underwent pilot testing with 22 respondents with varying sociodemographic backgrounds recruited through the author's extended network. The use of questionnaire methodology poses a serious challenge to the situational basis of pragmatic theory. Moreover, the focus on morality, concerns and engagements calls for a methodology that goes beyond abstract attitudinal questions. Consequently, questions were developed that evoke 'your city' and 'local urban greenspace,' tying it to concrete developments of potential concern to the respondent, such as attracting more tourists, supporting more wild nature or stimulating local grassroots (see Table 7.2). The aim is to make respondents answer to a concrete situation (even if hypothetical) in their city or local community. Certainly, this breaks with traditional survey strategy to the extent that it aims at exposing all respondents to the same stimulus in order to activate true attitudes in the responses (Saris & Gallhofer, 2014). Ultimately, pragmatist sociology is interested in situational concerns more than abstract attitudes and will consequently have to accept and work with the condition that responses refer to different situations for different responses. Indeed, it is for this reason that pragmatism favours abductive modes of inference (qualifed guesses about what is at stake) over inductive generalizations or deductive hypothesis testing (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012). The abductive logic of pragmatist inquiry makes research an iterative movement of questions and responses. Notably, this is why the analysis here is not


**Table 7.2** Operationalization of the eight justifcatory regimes

a The question posed in each case was 'To what extent do you agree with the following statement?' b The response categories were 'Strongly agree', 'Partly agree', Partly disagree', 'Strongly disagree', 'I have no opinion on the issue' and 'Don't know'

c Every question opens with 'Min kommune', meaning 'my municipality' with a ring of 'city council' (kommunalbestyrelse) to it, hinting at the political character of the questions

restricted to one statistical technique but employs three different techniques to illuminate different kinds of relations in the material (see below).

The questionnaire deploys eight regimes of justifcation (Table 7.1) in eight questions about the use and management of local UGS (Table 7.2). The idea was to see how the regimes are mobilized, contrasted and compromised in relation to UGS at a larger scale in Denmark. The questions consisted in statements that the respondents should rate their level of agreement with. Now, it may be that many people are a priori favourable toward many different kinds of initiatives related to their local urban greenspaces but become more selective when initiatives are presented in relations of mutual trade-offs and, more broadly, with a cost attached to each initiative. Indeed, as we have seen, the idea of a specifc 'sacrifce' intrinsic to each regime of justifcation is an important point in Boltanski and Thévenot's theory (see Table 7.1). Accordingly, the eight questions made explicit reference to specifc sacrifces related to each initiative through an 'even if…' (Table 7.2). Finally, the eight questions were presented in immediate sequence and in relation to the same overall issue (your local urban greenspaces) so as to emphasize the potential contrasts between them. While the theory allows for people to switch and combine justifcatory repertoires across situations and issues, the theory would have diffculties accounting for

people mobilizing all justifcatory regimes in relation to the same issue and in the same situation (the survey interview). In this way, the study sought to turn what is usually seen as disadvantages with survey methodology (from a pragmatic perspective) into an advantage. Potentially, the applied strategy may provide us with insights about contrasts and compromises between different forms of justifcation in relation to a specifc issue and type of real-life situations.

The statistical techniques used will be discussed in more detail when they appear in the analysis. Generally speaking, the three techniques account for patterns in the data in different ways. Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) produces a geometrical space in *n* dimensions responding to overall contrasts between different response patterns. Correlational class analysis (CCA) produces cluster-like classes based not on similar responses but on similar contrasts. For example, rather than grouping all 'green' justifcations together, CCA should group respondents who agree *and* disagree along a green-market axis in a different group than those (dis-) agreeing along a green-civic dimension. Finally, multiple regression analysis (MRA) is the more standard statistical technique that assumes one dependent variable and assesses the isolated explanatory power of different independent ones. Thus, the three techniques offer different ways of grouping and partitioning the data, affording a large degree of fexibility for the pragmatic theory of justifcation to exhibit its potentials and nuances.

## **A Space of Justifcatory Strategies**

Table 7.3 provides the raw correlation matrix, yielding a frst and rather striking fnding—all correlations between the eight justifcation variables are positive. Factor analysis (not shown) reveals a maximum of two underlying dimensions one based especially on renown and project justifcations (with some civic and industrial) and another based on domestic (with some green and inspiration). These appear to be far from the established view of an industrial-civic-market compromise (with some green). Indeed, not only are the two dimensions hard to decipher analytically, but there is also a strong (0.63) correlation between them, suggesting that they may be reduced to a single dimension encompassing all eight justifcation variables. However, it is possible that the somewhat brute factor analysis (assuming constant linear relationships between the variables) hides more subtle relationships from view. Two other statistical techniques are employed capable of detecting different kinds of relationships between the variables.

Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) treats variables as categorical and measures the *χ*<sup>2</sup> distances between them (Le Roux & Rouanet, 2010). Like multiple regression analysis (MRA), it uses least squares to regress linear functions that capture the most variance, but where MRA appoints a single ('dependent') variable on which distances are measured, MCA uses all the variables. The idea is that the resulting function captures a latent dimension in the data space. Whereas MRA already knows what its dependent variable represents because it is given in the

**Table 7.3** Correlation matrix of justifcation variables

respective survey question, MCA must now conceptualize its dimensions based on the contrasts in the data they represent. Here, as the space is generated from the eight justifcatory survey questions, it may be assumed that the resulting dimensions will concern different justifcatory strategies.

The frst MCA yields a result where three clouds are separated clearly from each other: 'Don't know,' 'No opinion' and substantial answers (agree/disagree). In other words, there is a strong tendency for respondents to respond *either* 'Don't know,' 'No opinion' or substantially (agree/disagree) *across* the eight justifcatory regimes. This is the frst indication that it is rather the overall attitude toward urban greenspaces than the specifc justifcatory regime that dominates the response patterns.

Going one step further, we would like to inquire whether there are divergent response patterns among the substantial responses, ignoring the 'Don't know' and 'No opinion' responses. In MCA, it is possible to set 'Don't know' and 'No opinion' as passive modalities (not contributing to the construction of the cloud). This is slightly problematic because these modalities are quite large in some instances (in one question they together hold 19.4% of the respondents). However, the result is clear: The MCA now exhibits a strongly convex pattern (Fig. 7.1), indicating that there is really only *one* latent dimension dominating the responses, ranging from 'strongly agree' to 'strongly disagree' across the eight questions (Fig. 7.2). While the Guttman effect is common with ordinal data, this is still a surprising result given the theory, as there seems to be no discriminating principles between the justifcatory regimes at the aggregate level.

We could think that this result is driven by the outliers—those relatively few who either agree with all or disagree with all regimes. However, we remove the tails of the distribution by calculating an average justifcatory score across the eight variables, assigning a numerical value to each of them from 1 to 4 ('Strongly disagree' = 1, etc.). When all respondents with an average agreement score below 2 (*n* = 50) or above 3.5 (*n* = 81) are removed, the result is slightly different, but not

**Fig. 7.1** Cloud of individuals

more in line with the theory. Now, all the 'Strongly agree' are opposed to all the 'Partly disagree' along the frst axis and all the 'Strongly disagree' to all the 'Partly agree' along the second axis. Certainly, the oppositions are no longer linear, but there are no relationships of contrast between the regimes either.

## **Justifcatory Classes**

One critique that could be raised against the MCA result is that it proceeds at an aggregate level while situations and people differ. For example, some people may think in terms of a green-civic compromise, while others think in terms of a

**Fig. 7.2** Cloud of modalities

green-industrial or a green-market compromise—but these distinctions become blurred when one looks at all respondents taken together. Indeed, with a plurality of such compromises, the aggregate result may just be an apparently positive correlation across all regimes of justifcation. Correlational class analysis (CCA) can help us decide whether different groups are in fact oriented by different regime compositions.

CCA is an improvement of Amir Goldberg's (2011) relational class analysis (Boutyline, 2017). The fundamental idea here is that people may think of cultural distinctions in different ways but that the overall schemas are collective. Respondent A strongly agreeing with all justifcatory regimes and another respondent B disagreeing with all of them belong to the same 'class' in the sense that their schema of distinctions is the same. Similarly, respondent C agreeing with half of the justifcatory regimes and strongly disagreeing with the rest shares the overall scheme of agreement and disagreement with respondent D indicating the exact reverse preferences. In this way, CCA maps another kind of patterns than MCA does. The downside of CCA is that it cannot meaningfully handle missing data, so all respondents declaring 'Don't know' or 'No opinion' on any of the eight questions must be excluded, leaving us with *n* = 734. It is of course possible to impute the missing values. However, it is not clear whether imputation would affect the results. Moreover, 'Don't know' and 'I have no opinion' are arguably substantial responses when it comes to identifying justifcatory regimes, undermining the analytical value of imputation. Results with imputation (not shown) yield somewhat different classes but the same overall pattern with few (11%) negative correlations, all of which are weak (<0.32).

CCA of the eight justifcatory regimes in the data produces four meaningful classes of responses. However, only 8 out of 96 correlations (8%) between the eight regimes in the four classes are negative, and only one of these narrowly exceeds the 'weak' threshold (0.32). Again, this indicates that there are almost no real contrasts within each class—only a distinction between stronger and weaker positive correlations. In fact, only one class contains some notable contrast (Table 7.4). The class (*n* = 135) exhibits moderate correlations between green, market, inspiration and domestic justifcations in contrast to renown and civic justifcations. However, the contrast is weak at best (−0.33 correlation between green and renown justifcations). The other three classes (tables in Appendix) contain virtually no contrast. This indicates that they are variations of 'omnivores' (Boutyline, 2017). The second class (*n* = 186) groups market, inspiration, domestic and renown—that is, almost the same combination as the frst class but with a positive correlation to renown instead of a contrast and with a weaker link to green. The third class (*n* = 189) has predominantly moderate correlations except for market justifcations, which are all weak (<0.32), indicating indifference rather than contrast to the latter. Finally, the fourth class (*n* = 181) groups market, renown and project, on the one hand, and green and inspiration, on the other hand. However, since there are no negative correlations between the two groups, these emerge rather as 'alternatives' or as two dimensions within the class than as a contrast.

**Table 7.4** The green-market-inspiration-domestic (vs) renown-civic class

In other words, the overall picture in the correlational class analysis is consistent with the result of the factor analysis and the multiple correspondence analysis, exhibiting very little or no contrast between justifcatory regimes. At best, we fnd patterns of non-exclusive alternatives and indifferences. Within the pattern of omnivorousness, the most notably 'compromise' seems to be one between market, inspiration and domestic with variants also including green and renown justifcations. This combination is quite different from the market-industrial-civic (with some green) observed in the qualitative literature. Intuitively, it makes sense to combine market, inspiration and renown in relation to local urban greenspaces, as these would form a kind of 'recreational' or perhaps even 'hedonistic' compromise. However, it is not clear how to understand the fact that this is sometimes combined with domestic and green justifcations as well. Finally, the result do not appear to be very robust, since imputation of missing values changes the classes somewhat, indicating weak or even arbitrary separation of the classes.

## **Justifcations, Values or Concerns?**

The overall image so far is that respondents strongly tend to answer evenly across all justifcatory regimes. When respondents deviate from this pattern, it is more a question of favouring one aspect of urban greenspaces over others than an outspoken contrast between opposing visions. In other words, the principal line of division does not appear to follow generic regimes of justifcation that have been formed outside the specifc realm in question and may be mobilized 'off-the-shelf' on it, but rather to simply be the overall degree of what (American) pragmatists would undoubtedly call 'concern' with local urban greenspaces as such. However, there is one alternative to this reading—already hinted in the introduction—that merits consideration: Schwartz's theory about a universal structure of ten human values (Davidov et al., 2008). One of the items used to measure what Schwartz and colleagues call 'universalism' (i.e., 'understanding, appreciation, tolerance and protection for the welfare of all people and for nature') reads that 'people should care for nature. Looking after the environment is important' (Davidov et al., 2008, p. 21). However, seeking to match the results above with this value scheme quickly runs into similar problems as the ones encountered for the theory about justifcatory regimes.

Notably, while 'green' justifcation matches one aspect of the value of universalism, other justifcatory regimes match other values in Schwartz's theory. For example, 'stimulation' corresponds closely to the inspiration regime, tradition to the domestic and achievement to renown. These four examples cover the entire 'circle of values' in Schwartz's theory making it equally paradoxical to encounter so little exclusiveness and so broad synergies. The Schwartz theory would have to make a very strong claim that all eight variables 'really' measure the same universal value (e.g., universalism)—despite the very different emphases manifest in them intuitively corresponding to different such values.

By contrast, American pragmatism would be able to account for the results in a less speculative manner, claiming that the eight questions all refect a single concern with local urban greenspaces. Indeed, from this perspective, it may be speculated that respondents mobilize this concern (or lack of concern) in the specifc survey situation requiring them to answer the eight questions, disregarding the differences in justifcatory (or value) in each item's phrasing. While still speculative, of course, the assumptions imputed here are considerably weaker than the ones needed to save either of the two other theories. Indeed, from an American pragmatist perspective, it could be argued that both theories fail to account for the results on the same grounds—by 'subsuming various vocabularies of motives under some terminology or list' (Mills, 1940, p. 913). To be sure, this leaves us with little insights about the general social repertoires in which respondents draw in relation to local urban greenspaces. However, such repertoires are not excluded—only, sometimes it is better to insist on one's ignorance than to make too daring inferences from theory.

Conducting an analysis based on the notion of concerns rather than justifcations will have to wait a later occasion. However, within the scope of the present chapter, we may attempt to reverse our perspective on the eight variables under study from one of different justifcatory regimes to one of different aspects of a single dimension: concern for local urban greenspaces. The limitation here will be that the eight variables are not prepared to distinguish *different* concerns in relation to urban greenspaces, but viewing them under one *as* a concern with urban greenspaces may be the frst step in the change of approach to 'concerns frst.'

## **Concern with Urban Greenspaces**

Besides the eight justifcatory questions, the survey questionnaire also contains measures of civic engagement in urban greenspaces—more specifcally of activism and participation in urban green community life. Treating the eight justifcatory regimes as a single dimension and assessing their correlation with civic engagement provide a good indicator of whether or not that dimension refects concerns or not. If it does, we would expect a considerable positive correlation, but if the resulting correlation is weak or insignifcant, it will be a strong signal that we are on the wrong track. Indeed, concern and engagement in some respects may be inseparable concepts. However, the aim here is not to isolate two factors in order to test a causal relationship so much as it is to provide support or rebuttal for the thesis that the eight variables taken under one represent a single dimension of concern.

I construct a simple index of overall concern with local urban greenspaces in the following way. I frst assign a numeric value of 1–4 for each justifcatory regime, setting 'Don't know' and 'No opinion' as missing values. I then calculate the mean of the non-missing values across the eight variables, setting respondents with less than three out of eight flled values as missing. This variable thus ranges from 1 to 4 with 104 respondents having missing values. As can be seen in the descriptive table and histogram in the Appendix, the variable has a fairly normal distribution and a standard deviation of 0.51. I then construct an ordinal variable on whether the respondent has been actively engaged in or simply participated in urban green community activities, ranging from hiking tours to sport and maintenance and cultivation and to political engagements. Using these variables, I conduct an ordinal logistic analysis of the correlation between concern and engagement in urban green community life, controlled for the educational level, family income, gender, age and city size (see the Appendix for descriptive statistics on the variables). Table 7.5 presents the results of the analysis.

Concern comes out with a considerable signifcant effect on urban green community participation. Exponentiated, the parameter estimate 0.588 gives an increase in odd ratio of 1.8. In other words, an increase of 1 point on the concern index (ranging from 1 to 4) almost doubles the odds of one step up in green urban community engagement (from none to participation or from participation to active). The result thus supports the thesis that the eight questions represent a single dimension that may be better described as a 'concern' for local urban greenspaces than in terms of justifcation. The result is far from conclusive but opens a range of new questions to be addressed.

## **Concluding Discussion**

The chapter began by identifying a strong (American) pragmatist tendency in the main debates and currents of social movement studies identifed in the introduction to this volume, concerning the interactional, institutional and emotional aspects of morality. It then inspected a specifc (French) pragmatist theory of justifcation, that of Boltanski and Thévenot (2006), as a potentially valuable approach to morality


**Table 7.5** Ordinal logistic regression on green urban community engagement

*n* = 1.021.

and civic engagements in social movement studies. Specifcally, the theory of justifcatory regimes promises a way to steer between the situated critical engagements of people, on the one hand, and the broader social repertoires on which they may draw in their public engagements. In other words, the theory potentially offers mediation between the strong American pragmatist basis of much social movements scholarship, on the one hand, and competing theories about values and political engagements based on universal structures, such as Shalom Schwartz's theory (Davidov et al., 2008). More broadly, engaging with these questions may potentially contribute to making survey research contribute with less reifed results to policy makers and the media, hopefully opening up for more nuances about the dynamics of morality, context and agency in relation to social movements.

Exploring this potential, I designed a set of questions to measure the eight different justifcatory regimes identifed by the theory for a national survey on local urban greenspace engagements in Denmark. Based on the theory, I expected to be able to map contrasting justifcatory practices and compromises. However, the predominant result across a number of different data mining techniques was that the eight regimes correlate very closely—both at the overall level and at the subgroup level. In other words, respondents vary mainly not by favouring one (set of) justifcatory regimes in contrast to others, but in their level of justifcatory intensity across the eight regimes. This unifying dimension, I argued, may better be described as 'concern' with local urban greenspaces than in terms of justifcatory practice—let alone of universal values. Regressing an index of concern for local urban greenspaces constructed from the eight variables on respondents' levels of civic engagement in their local greenspaces provided support for this reading.

Although everything was prepared in the questionnaire design to set up a 'situation' corresponding to the pragmatist notion hereof, we should frst ask whether our result could be an artefact of measurement. Specifcally, it may be that respondents read the eight consecutive questions about how to manage urban greenspaces not in their justifcatory details but only superfcially and in light of their own stronger or weaker engagement in this general theme. However, if this is the case, it would not only be a problem for the questionnaire design. Indeed, it would rather confrm the American pragmatist thesis that responses are predominantly motivated by an overall concern for local urban greenspaces, rather than being structured by pre-existing justifcatory regimes or values. If the questionnaire design had not departed from a preset classifcation of justifcatory regimes, but from an ambition to explore the different concerns people associate with urban greenspaces, we might have found variation among more than one dimension as was the case. This brings us to a scrutiny of the potential challenges with the theory and its methodological implications.

In the spirit of C.W. Mills, the notion of concerns invites for a more exploratory analysis of the conficts, contradictions, uncertainties and tensions that people respond to – both in their civic engagements and when faced with a survey questionnaire. It does not imply an a priori rejection of structures, but circumvents attempts at importing schemas defned outside the concerns in question as a way to make sense of civic practices. This does not mean that the notion of concern demands a naïve confnement to a here and now. Rather, it turns the question around and demands that any connections to structures and problems outside the here and now in question make part of the analytical demonstration.

Concretely, instead of designing survey questions according to a generic justifcatory scheme of regimes, it would demand a search for all possible layers and aspects of different peoples' concerns in relation to local urban greenspaces. For example, it would not invoke 'attracting tourists, companies and labour force to the city by creating attractive greenspaces' as a strategy to measure the market regime of justifcation, that is, a justifcatory thinking in terms of money and wealth. Instead, it would scan the different economic issues that may arise in relation to greenspaces. It would quickly fnd that such issues involve connections not only to tourists, companies and labour force but also to issues, for example, of pollution, biodiversity, education, recreational value and public health. The challenge would be to seize as many as possible of these relations, leaving open for the subsequent analysis the question of the overall structures that bind these issues together, searching for patterns among these heterogeneous measures. Such structures may not be those of coherent justifcatory regimes, but may equally well take the shape of problems, conficts and contradictions. Thus, instead of defning what 'the market' means in the theory, inquiry would focus on the situated problems of delimiting it from other categories, such as 'nature' (Krarup, 2019, 2021a, 2021b). In other words, the content by which the theory characterizes each of the justifcatory regimes is inseparable from the concerns and problems that motivate public contestation in the frst place. Departing from predefned regimes may undermine the methodological sensitivity to the complex and structures of those concerns in the specifc situation at hand. Consequently, describing concerns in terms of general patterns or structures must be a result of the analysis rather than a pre-specifed scheme.

## **Appendix**

Class 2 (*n* = 186): Market-inspiration-domestic-renown.

Class 3 (*n* = 189): All moderate, except market.

Class 4 (181): market-renown-project and green-inspiration.

#### **Descriptive statistics: Regression analysis variables**


Note: Ordinal logistic regression cannot operate with ordinal, but only continuous and nominal variables. Here, the educational level and family income are treated as continuous, while civic engagement and city size are treated as nominal

#### Distribution of 'concern' index

## **References**

Alexander, J. C. (2006). *The civil sphere*. Oxford University Press.


Touraine, A. (1992). Beyond social movements? *Theory, Culture & Society, 9*(1), 125–145.

Wachsmuth, D., & Angelo, H. (2018). Green and gray: New ideologies of nature in urban sustainability policy. *Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108*(4), 1038–1056.

Walzer. (1983). *Spheres of justice: A defense of pluralism and equality*. Basic Books. New edition.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Chapter 8 Social Movements Prefguring Political Theory**

#### **Sophia Wathne**

**Abstract** Adding to the growing literature on social movements as knowledge and theory creators, this chapter wants more social movement research to focus on the content of the *political theories created by social movements*, as an outcome of their morality. This chapter argues that prefgurative social movements create political theory through the interplay of their internal and external communication, their organization, and in their discussions of how and why to change the world: They are prefguring political theory through their cognitive praxis. The chapter demonstrates how the literature on prefgurative social movements and Ron Jamison and Andrew Eyerman's concept of cognitive praxis, combined with a decolonial feminist approach to knowledge and theory, provides space for the political theory of social movements within social movement literature. This theory is inherently political as it is aimed to be a (temporary) guide toward the kind of world the movements want to see and argues why the world should look like that.

The chapter briefy outlines how a Cartesian approach to science prevents us from viewing theory based on lived experience as theory, even though all theory is based on lived experience, and thereby explains why we have not taken the knowledge and theory created by social movements seriously for so long. To recognize social movements as political actors, we need to engage with the concepts, policy proposals, critiques, or new institutions that they are creating, and not only the mechanics around creating them. Consequently, we need to recognize social movements as the authors of the knowledge and theory they create and not take credit for "discovering" it. Lastly, from a decolonial approach, we should recognize that social movement research is relational and that the research process should involve the social movements themselves to make sure they also beneft from it, and view them as colleagues who are sharing their knowledge with us. Moving away from the more Cartesian view of science requires a decolonization of the entire research process, and in particular rethinking what this means in terms of authorship, ownership, and credit.

© The Author(s) 2023

S. Wathne (\*)

Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy e-mail: sophia.wathne@sns.it

A. Sevelsted, J. Toubøl (eds.), *The Power of Morality in Movements*, Nonproft and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98798-5\_8

**Keywords** Social movements · Political theory · Decoloniality · Prefguration · Cognitive praxis

"We have to go back to the original meaning of theory in Greek, theoria, meaning a view and a contemplation. View assumes a viewer, a ground on which to stand, and what is viewed from that standpoint. A view is also a framework for organizing what is seen and a thinking about the viewed."

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, "Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing."

## **Introduction**

As many in this volume will point to, it is about high time that we engage with social movements as moral actors, as this is what social movements are at their core: Social movements are either trying to create change or prevent change from happening, based on a shared *normative*, or moral, perspective on these changes (della Porta, 2013; della Porta & Diani, 2006, pp. 240–241). In social movements, both actions and discussions of how and why to act are integral to their existence, and this metacritique of society, that we see within both their discourses and their actions,*is* theory, *political theory*. They are not only analyzing their societal context; they are also proposing how it should change or avoid change, redefning concepts and creating new knowledge (Casas-Cortés et al., 2008, p. 22; Cox, 2019, pp. 6–7; della Porta & Diani, 2006; della Porta & Pavan, 2017; Hall, 2009, p. 67; Hardt & Negri, 2017, pp. 20–21; Arribas Lozano, 2018, pp. 452, 454–455; Milan, 2014, p. 448; Niesz et al., 2018, pp. 2–4; Wright, 2010, pp. 26–29). This political theory is their practical moral compass. However, the research into the concepts, proposals, or knowledge of social movements often focus on the how, when, and who of knowledge and theory diffusion, and rarely do we as social movements scholars focus on the content of that knowledge and theory.

While we of course need to understand the mechanics of social movements to understand the theories, to truly take social movements seriously as moral actors, we need to also engage with their values, with their ideas, and with their strategy: We need to recognize their political theory as valuable contributions. I will show that theory and knowledge creation is part of the strategy for prefgurative movements—movements whose strategy is to live the future they want, today—as they are creating political theory through their practices which aim at prefguring the kind of society they want to create or preserve. In this chapter, I will outline why I think movements' morality in the shape of political theory has not been focused on in social movement research and sketch out one possible way to rectify it—it all boils down to creating epistemic justice for social movements by recognizing them as knowledge and theory creators in their own right.

In order to recognize social movements as the authors of their own political theory—not simply objects to be studied and the muses of academics, the "true" creators of theory—we need to reorient our notions of who creates knowledge away from a classic Cartesian approach to science that is based in a dichotomy of mind and body. We need to consider the collective cognitive praxis of social movements as political theory and that this political theory can and should be treated equally and be in critical dialogue with academic political theory (Bevington & Dixon, 2005, pp. 189–190; Choudry & Kapoor, 2010, pp. 2–6; Foley, 1999, pp. 1–5; hooks, 1991, p. 3; Todd, 2015, pp. 249–250; Val et al., 2019). Theory creation is a fundamental human praxis, not a practice limited to academics, and theory, as all other knowledge creation, is shaped by the context in which it is created. Social movements are thereby not the only ways people create knowledge or theory collectively, but social movements are the focus of this chapter as knowledge and theory creation is inherent to their praxis (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 55–56; Foley, 1999, pp. 1–3; hooks, 1991; Santos, 2016, pp. 188–189).

In order to make room for the political theory of social movements, we, therefore, need to do as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o asks and bring theory back down to earth where it all started – we need to contextualize it, provincialize it, and challenge the Cartesian mind-body dichotomy (Thiong'o, 2012, pp. 14–16; Vincent, 2004, pp. 8–9). Fortunately, there is a growing literature within social movement scholarship focusing on social movements as knowledge and theory creators in their own right, and this chapter aims to add to this growing literature (Casas-Cortés et al., 2008; Choudry, 2009; Choudry & Kapoor, 2010; Cox, 2019; Cox & Fominaya, 2009; Daro, 2009; Della Porta & Pavan, 2017; Hall, 2009; Arribas Lozano, 2018; Lysack, 2009; Niesz, 2019; Niesz et al., 2018; Teasley & Butler, 2020). However, literature on social movements and knowledge creation has existed even longer within the literature on adult, or popular, education and, both directly and indirectly, in the literature on decolonial critiques of westernized1 epistemologies (Foley, 1999; Hall, 2009; Niesz et al., 2018; Santos, 2016; Teasley & Butler, 2020). Often this work ends up falling between the cracks of disciplines and not sticking in the mainstream social movement discussions. I also take a decolonial feminist approach to research, and, consequently, this chapter is inherently critical of the inheritance of the enlightenment and the notion of modernity and science that sprang from it (Grosfoguel, 2013; Mbembe, 2015; Mignolo, 2011; Santos, 2016; Shiva, 2005, 2016).

Decolonial thought is not one streamlined feld or literature, but to simplify it, I am basing my understanding on the following strands: The modernity/coloniality approach that came out of interdisciplinary work in Latin America (Escobar & Pardo, 2007; Maldonado-Torres, 2018; Maldonado-Torres et al., 2018; Mignolo, 2011, 2017; Quijano, 2000; Santos et al., 2008), literature of indigenous scholars (Smith, 2012; Tallbear, 2014; Todd, 2015; Tuck, 2009; Tuck & Yang, 2012), feminist and ecofeminist thinkers (Dalmiya & Alcoff, 1992; hooks, 1991, 2010; Mies &

<sup>1</sup>Westernized is used instead of "Global North" or "Western" to highlight that this is a practice rather than tied to one place. Moreover, westernized academia not only ignores the vast history of the global south but also the indigenous and subaltern groups using prefgurative strategies within the global north.

Shiva, 2014; Shiva, 2016), and decolonial scholars from Africa or in the African diaspora (Mbembe, 2015; Mkabela, 2005; Owusu-Ansah & Mji, 2013; Thiong'o, 2012; White, 2018). Of course, these distinctions are mainly heuristic as many of these scholars fall into more than one category, and these categories are informed by my PhD project which is a Participatory Action Research project with the Kenyan Peasants League. To further situate my thinking, I was born and raised in Denmark with roots in Tanzania, and inhabiting the double consciousness of the African diaspora in Europe motivates me to highlight the knowledge and theory that is often undervalued and unrecognized within westernized academia. However, as a lightskinned, sometimes white passing, academic trained in Europe, I have been part of this erasure, and I am constantly striving to be refexive about how I from my immensely privileged position risk perpetuating this erasure. This chapter is also a way for me as a researcher to rethink and unlearn what it means to do social movement research, as I have made many of the mistakes I outline in this chapter.

Lastly, the decolonial approach to theory in turn necessitates a decolonization of the role of the scholar, and I suggest we go from expert discoverers to colleagues. Sometimes we forget that researchers are students frst and foremost, and our teachers are the people we engage with through our research, just as our academic colleagues teach us about their work (Choudry & Kapoor, 2010; Owusu-Ansah & Mji, 2013, pp. 2–3; Tallbear, 2014, p. 2). This reorientation of the scholar-movement dynamic aims to give credit where credit is due and counteract the erasure and epistemicide of oral and communal knowledge in general and indigenous and other marginalized knowledges in particular (Morell, 2009, p. 30; Santos, 2008, pp. 24–29; Tallbear, 2014, p. 2). I will start by showing how already existing theories within social movement scholarship can accommodate a different view of theory and knowledge, specifcally, theories on prefgurative social movements and cognitive praxis within social movements.

## **Prefgurative Social Movements**

Prefguring, at its most basic, means to live the future in the present, living as if the world had already changed. Thereby, *every* action counts within social movements that use prefguration as a strategy, as they all need to align with the future they seek. Prefguration is here understood exactly as a strategic choice certain social movements make: They believe it is both the morally right way to act and the best way to achieve their goals (Maeckelbergh, 2011, pp. 13–15). Consequently, most of the literature on prefgurative social movements have focused either on how the movements remain "pure" by equating means and goals or on their experimentation of how they can build a new world within the old, or simply *living the future* (Boggs, 1977, p. 100; Day, 2005, pp. 34–36, 126; Leach, 2013; Maeckelbergh, 2011, p. 4; Wright, 2010, pp. 6–7; Yates, 2015, pp. 3–4).

## *Prefguring Theory*

At the heart of the literature on prefgurative social movements is a belief that it is valuable to experiment with and build alternative social structures—whether those are to be expanded after a revolution or through a long-term reform process (Boggs, 1977, p. 104; Wright, 2010, pp. 5–6). When Carl Boggs originally coined the term, he positioned *the prefgurative tradition*, inspired by anarchist practices, against the Leninist approach to social change and revolution (Boggs, 1977, pp. 100, 103–105). According to Boggs, the problem with the Leninist approach is its elitist vanguardism, its reliance on existing state structures, and its lack of blueprint for after the revolution, which leads to the new regime being too tied to the institutions of the old regime (Boggs, 1977, pp. 102–103, 108–109). So, for example, even if we can fnd evidence that Lenin himself would not have approved of the bureaucratization that escalated after his death, the movement had no other blueprint to follow. On the other hand, for Boggs, the strength of prefguration is its trust in the grassroots, which leads to many locally based experiments that might start sketching a blueprint for a different society and rally support among people for these new structures (Boggs, 1977, pp. 103–104). However, the advantages of prefguration are also seen as its downfall: According to Boggs, most local movements fail to spread as they are too rooted in their own context, and the prefgurative attempt of equating goals and means often results in inaction and a lack of leadership (Boggs, 1977, pp. 113–114; Wright, 2010, pp. 334–336, 370–371). The current critique of prefgurative strategies mirrors Boggs critique: That prefguration is often hard to scale up and that its emphasis on doing everything "correctly" can leave it defenseless by not being strategic enough (focusing on spontaneity) or result in nothing getting done (Yates, 2015, pp. 8–9). However, Marianne Maeckelbergh challenges this notion that prefguration and strategy are mutually exclusive, rather she argues that prefguration *is* a conscious strategy and that social movements who use prefguration as a strategy do get stuff done. The social movements using prefguration as a strategy believe that it is impossible to reach one's goals with means that are not compatible with the end goal: We might change the people sitting in the institutions but not the institutions themselves, which is exactly Boggs critique of Lenin (Maeckelbergh, 2011, pp. 13–14; Yates, 2015, pp. 7–11). Boggs original argument is that the Leninist movements are prefguring the wrong kind of future by associating too closely with existing state structures that do not align with their values (Boggs, 1977, pp. 102–104, 107–109). Moreover, if we look beyond the discussion of vanguards vs. prefguration and focus more on what the different prefgurative movements actually are creating or trying to create, we will not only be able to chronicle many creative ways of changing the world, but we are also able to support or criticize the movements on their own terms.

At its core, the prefgurative argument is a constructivist argument, based on the assumption that in all political action, we are producing or reproducing certain power relations, values, and forms of organizing (Foley, 1999, pp. 3–5). Theory creation and prefguration are inescapable human activities that we perform both consciously and unconsciously, and the *cognitive* space that prefgurative social movements create facilitate these processes (hooks, 1991, pp. 1–3, 8; Wright, 2010, pp. 26–28, 274–279). To some degree, all social movements prefgure a different society, while prefgurative movements are actively aiming for it. Whether the world they are aiming for looks a lot like what we already have, or a far cry from it does not change that. It is important to note that there of course is a large difference among the social movements that use prefguration as a strategy—they have different historical circumstances, different goals, different participants, and different takes on what a prefguration strategy looks like. However, the overarching point is that their prefgurative praxis *is* their theory. They are basing their activities on morals and values, and letting their experiences and experiments inform their morals and values—it is a continual, iterative, theory-making process. Theory is here defned as a more or less abstract, and purposeful, explanation of the connection of concepts, while practice is defned as both speech acts and physical acts, or discourses and actions, and it is *political* theory, due to its orientation toward shaping society. The concept of theory here leans on more classical conceptions of theory, quite literally, in terms of the original Greek meaning of theory as observation, which connects theory to lived experience.

Bell hooks elegantly describes the kind of communal deliberations that take place in, for example, social movements as theory making:

"When our lived experience of theorizing is fundamentally linked to processes of selfrecovery, of collective liberation, no gap exists between theory and practice. Indeed, what such experience makes more evident is the bond between the two-that ultimately reciprocal process wherein one enables the other" (hooks, 1991, p. 2).

However, as academics we often ignore the theorizing that takes place outside academia. Since the enlightenment, westernized science has been based on an assumed dichotomy between mind and matter, which has resulted in a divide between theory and practice.

## **Mind and Body: A Colonial Legacy**

This Cartesian separation of mind and body still lingers in most of westernized science, especially in the positivist understanding of science where distance between the researcher and the subject is seen as necessary to create *objective* knowledge (Berger & Kellner, 1981, pp. 25–26; Mies, 2014, pp. 38–40; Steager, 2013, p. 174). When physical activity is so starkly separated from mental activity, practice and theory are also seen as dichotomous—it prioritizes *knowing-that*, analytical knowledge, over *knowing-how*, or practical knowledge (Dalmiya & Alcoff, 1992, p. 221, 1992, pp. 220–221; Grosfoguel, 2013, pp. 75–77; Shiva, 2014, pp. 24–25). This suggests that the more abstract a theory is, the more *objective* it potentially is, as it rises above the particularities of subjectivity.

This divide has been the raison-dêtre of academia for a long time, as it assumes that academics are the only ones capable of creating (true) objective knowledge, as we are (supposedly) only engaging our minds, rising above our bodily experiences (Dalmiya & Alcoff, 1992, pp. 217–221; Grosfoguel, 2013, pp. 74–78; hooks, 1994, pp. 137–139; Mignolo, 1999, p. 237). Even in post-foundational and critical theories, it is hard to escape this dichotomy as academic theorists still attempt to "rise above" their context (Allen, 2017, pp. 12–19, 77–78, 204–206). Any project that attempts to go against this, and situate the knowledge created, will be viewed as partial in the double sense: both as incomplete and non-neutral. However, *all* theory is based on lived experience. The difference is that a lot of academic theory is based on the distanced observations of *others*' lived experience, as this is seen to be appropriately objective, while theory that is based on observations of one's *own* lived experience is dismissed as too *partial* (Anderson, 2004, pp. 4–6; hooks, 1991, p. 4, hooks, 2015, pp. 44–45). This is still present in the, often unspoken, division of labor between academic theorists and activists, each encouraged to stick to what they know best, completely obfuscating the fact that activists create theory of their own and that academics can be activists (Bevington & Dixon, 2005; Choudry & Kapoor, 2010, pp. 3–6; Morell, 2009, pp. 25, 27–28, 35–37). Most importantly, this rejection of the partial, the lived, and the experienced also denies authorship to the very people who created the knowledge that scholars learned from them—instead of acknowledging movements for creating certain terms, we credit scholars with "discovering" them (Cahil, Based on work with the Fed up Honeys, 2010, p. 182; Choudry & Kapoor, 2010; Santos et al., 2008, pp. xxxviii–xxxix; Tallbear, 2014, pp. 1–3; Todd, 2015, pp. 245–246, Todd, 2016, pp. 17–18). I will return to this briefy in the fnal part of this chapter.

The main problem with this epistemological dichotomy is exactly its colonial underpinnings, as it denies the validity of non-westernized forms of knowledge and results in epistemic injustice or epistemicide, by undervaluing, appropriating, silencing, or eradicating certain kinds of knowledge (Anderson & McLachlan, 2016, p. 297; Grosfoguel, 2013, pp. 76–78, 84–85; Santos, 2016, pp. 152–153, 251). Consequently, this dichotomy upholds the myth that westernized academia is both value free and ahistorical and that any serious theory is the same – universal. This epistemic injustice, is often used to justify dehumanization or marginalization of the groups holding this knowledge, which in turn leads to discrimination, violence, and oppression (Grosfoguel, 2013, pp. 84–85).

Feminist and decolonial scholarship and research has shown that epistemic practices are always both historically situated and value based, and not being explicit about this is in fact the real problem (Anderson, 2004, pp. 19–21; Dalmiya & Alcoff, 1992, pp. 238–239; Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 56–57; Mies, 2014, p. 38; Wylie, 2003, p. 341). The decolonial critique of the universalistic Cartesian view of science, which intersects with and is informed by feminist scholarship, outlines an alternative pluriverse approach to knowledge and the university. Knowledge is seen as relational and communal, moving away from a notion that it comes from the isolated minds of individual geniuses (Choudry & Kapoor, 2010; Grosfoguel, 2013; Maldonado-Torres, 2006; Mbembe, 2015; Niesz, 2019; Santos et al., 2008; Shiva, 2016). It is about challenging whose knowledge creation we value and moving away from a Cartesian *gods eye view* of knowledge as something "[…]monological, unsaturated and asocial[…]" (Grosfoguel, 2013, p. 76) to an understanding that there exists *ecologies of knowledges* (Santos, 2016, pp. 111–112, 115–116, 188–190, 206–211; Santos et al., 2008, pp. xlvii–xlix) that are always already partial, relational, and situated. According to Boaventura de Sousa Santos, westernized science has *only* valued and universalized what he calls the epistemology of the North, so, creating epistemic justice requires us to strengthen and bring to light the epistemologies of the South, through a sociology of absences and a sociology of emergences (Santos, 2016, pp. 45–46, 145–147, 164–165, 171–173,184–189), as I return to below.

At this point, it is important to note that contextualizing theory does not mean that it cannot travel outside its context. Frantz Fanon's exploration of the particular colonial situation of Algeria in *Wretched of the Earth* has resonated with people in similar, but distinct situations across the globe. Not in spite of its closeness to its context, but because of it, as it allows the reader to easily identify what is familiar and what needs to be translated (Thiong'o, 2012, pp. 23–25, 57–58). Moreover, when trying to understand the world, we cannot solely rely on theories created in one part of the world. We need to provincialize westernized knowledges and recognize that the world is made up of an *ecology of knowledges* (Santos et al., 2008, pp. xlvii–xlix). An ecology of knowledges does not lead to moral relativism, rather it leads to an acknowledgment that no knowledge is complete and to approach the world from this humbling starting point (Grosfoguel, 2013, p. 88; Santos, 2016, pp. 189–191).

Both theory and knowledge creation are fundamental human acts for which a space is created within not just academia and social movements, but throughout our lives (della Porta, 2013, pp. 5–6; Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 55–57; Foley, 1999; hooks, 1991, p. 8). The point of this chapter is not to fip the hierarchy and place practice on the top. As bell hooks eloquently explains, it is the dichotomy that is the problem; we need both theory *and* practice. Moreover, it is important for hooks to underscore that theory is not a luxury item; it is crucial to our very existence (hooks, 1991, pp. 7–8). Instead of a dichotomy, practice and theory are in an iterative relationship, either informing or being informed by one another (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 49–50; hooks, 1991, pp. 5–6; Thiong'o, 2012, pp. 15, 19–21; Vincent, 2004, pp. 8–9). This mirrors Santos' notions of *sociology of absences* and *sociology of emergences*: The sociology of absences aims at highlighting the alternative ways of living or knowledge that are being practiced but has been hidden or overlooked by westernized science, while the sociology of emergences is about looking to expand what we deem possible for the future, that seems impossible to westernized science (Santos, 2008, pp. 45–46, 171–176, 184–189). Both are meant as ways of creating epistemic, or cognitive, justice by taking up space for the epistemologies of the South, as there will be no social justice without epistemic justice (Santos, 2016, p. 233). While Santos highlights that social movements naturally practice a sociology of absences, by bringing new present alternatives forward (Santos, 2016, p. 175), I would say they also practice the sociology of emergences by highlighting different possibilities of how to walk into the future (Santos, 2016, p. 186). So, when social movements prefgure their own political theory, they exactly walk this line of what is already created and what these creations hold in store for the future. The epistemological deconstruction of the Cartesian worldview is therefore crucial to my argument but will not be elaborated further here, and it has been presented thoroughly elsewhere (Choudry & Kapoor, 2010; Dalmiya & Alcoff, 1992; Dalmiya, 2016; Esteves, 2008; Grosfoguel, 2013; Harding, 2008; Maldonado-Torres, 2006; Santos, 2016; Santos et al., 2008; Shiva, 2014, 2016).

There is already a concept in social movement literature that encompasses this prefgurative view of theory making and highlights the iterative relationship between practice and theory: *cognitive praxis* (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991). While the cognitive approach, as the prefgurative approach, focuses on all the different aspects of a movement, it specifcally focuses on what cognitive praxis is created through it all. And this is exactly where these two literatures complement each other well and make room for political theory created by social movements within social movement literature.

## **Cognitive Praxis**

Cognitive praxis is the practice of knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, teaching, and experimentation, and Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison argue that all social movements create a space that facilitates such cognitive praxis within the movement and in interaction with both allies and enemies. This is in itself not new as many social movement scholars have shown that social movements are great places for, especially democratic, experimentation (Dalmiya, 2016, p. 262; della Porta, 2013; della Porta & Diani, 2006; della Porta & Pavan, 2017; Smith, 2012, pp. 150–151, 159–161; Wright, 2010, pp. 26–29). What is different from other approaches is that the focus is on what knowledge and theory is being created, and how it affects society, and not *only* the mechanics of how it is being created, again, in order to move focus from being solely on the mechanics to the content. It is often hard, if not impossible, to measure the exact effect of the movement, but it is possible to see how a movement has been part of opening certain cognitive space or introduce certain concepts (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, p. 64). While the literature on diffusion between social movements and within transnational movements has broached this from the perspective of how far these ideas travel, again I suggest we also focus on the ideas themselves (Tarrow & McAdam, 2004).

Cognitive praxis is constantly in fux within social movement spaces (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 55–58). Cognitive spaces exist in all different contexts, not only in social movements, but Eyerman and Jamison underline that the cognitive space within social movements is often more open to experimentation than other cognitive spaces, and it often leads to new knowledge, both formal and informal (Choudry, 2009, p. 8; Choudry & Kapoor, 2010, p. 2; Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 66–68). Cognitive praxis is of course only *one* aspect of social movements; however, it is what makes them unique according to Eyerman and Jamison, and an important feature that should be recognized. Moreover, focusing on cognitive praxis does not mean leaving organization or mobilization behind, as all the practices of social movements are informed by and inform their cognitive praxis, through an iterative relationship – the how is still important, it is simply not the focus of the analysis (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, p. 55). This is evident in the three dimensions that cognitive praxis consists of according to Eyerman and Jamison cosmology, organization, and technology (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 66–68).

## *Cosmology, Organization, and Technology*

Inspired by Habermas, Eyerman and Jamison outline three dimensions of social movements cognitive praxis, the cosmological dimension, the technological dimension, and the organizational dimension (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 68–69). At the basis of any movement is the cosmological dimension—this is the movements ontology, its values and its goals—which can be "read" from the movements own texts, and this is where the normative aspirations of the movement can be found (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, p. 70). The technological and organizational dimensions revolve around which technologies and organizational structures the movements use, but also which they distance themselves from. The organizational dimension includes both internal organization and external communication and alliances, while both the technological and organizational dimensions relate to dissemination of knowledge (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 68–69, 75–76).

It is mainly within the technological and organizational dimension that there is space for practical experimentation with new ways of being. This knowledge creation happens internally in the movements, when movements interact with other movements, or governments, or the public at large—it is in their strategy, in their internal practices, their values, their goals, their identities, their protests, their projects, their conficts, and their alliances (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 57–59). The technological and organizational dimensions both inform and are informed by the cosmological dimension. Therefore, to understand a social movement's political theory, we must investigate all three and how they interact (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 71–74). Additionally, the notion of different *cosmologies* being present in the world also fts well with the decolonial outset of this chapter, which is at its core an attempt to provincialize the knowledge production of westernized science (Mbembe, 2015, pp. 9–10, 13–14; Santos et al., 2008, pp. xx–xxi). Moreover, Eyerman and Jamison want to present the cognitive praxis of the movements, on its own terms, rather than trying to "prove" they are part of a certain ideology (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 46–47). Such an approach, which I myself have been guilty of doing, not only assumes there to be a limited number of acceptable ideas in the world, it also undermines the agency of the activists by assuming that it is up to the academic expert, or a vanguard, to "diagnose" their ideas for them. Therefore,

focusing on the political theory created by social movements cannot be solely focused on any kind of vanguard whether inside or outside the movement.

## *Movement Intellectuals*

Eyerman and Jamison distinguish between intellectual-in-movement and movement intellectuals—the frst is often the classic *partisan intellectual*, with a vanguardist approach to the movement, while the latter are intellectuals whose intellectual practice is born within the movement (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 108–109, 113–119). They make it clear that cognitive practice is not something left to the so-called organic intellectuals or the (un)offcial leaders of a movement. Moreover, they insist that intellectuals of all kinds grow from the movement and are continually shaped by the movement (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 94–95, 110–113):

"Movement intellectuals draw on established intellectual contexts, but the established tradition must always be reinterpreted and adapted to the needs of the movement. It is not, as Lenin insisted, the intellectual who brings consciousness to the movement: that was the central fallacy of Stalinism. It is rather the case, as the young Lukács insisted, that intellectuals become conscious within the context of a social movement" (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, p. 166).

This is crucial, as the notion of the philosopher kings—however watered down it may be—goes against the ontological belief that knowledge is co-created, as it is then up to these special individuals to discover nuggets of golden philosophical insight and then pass it on to the rest of us (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, p. 57; Vincent, 2004, p. 27). For Gramsci, the organic intellectual is defned by their *functional* role, and while it is very interesting and important to look into the power dynamics and different functions within social movements, of (un)offcial leaders and organic intellectuals, talking about the elites is not automatically the same as talking about the ideas (Gramsci, 1971, pp. 5–13; Rodriguez & Smith, 2013, p. 70). Moreover, focusing only on the so-called organic intellectuals within movements who often are the ones doing work that would be recognized by academia—erases the *intellectual* aspects of the technical and organizational work: We need to look at the whole picture and broaden our notion of valuable knowledge and theory (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, p. 113). We need to recognize social movements as knowledge and theory creators in their own right. Casas-Cortés et al. highlight that studying what they call *knowledge-practices*, within social movements, means not always focusing on the spectacle of the protest or the external discourses, but looking at the mundane everyday activities of movements—the meetings, the day-to-day organizing, planning, banner making, etc. (Casas-Cortés et al., 2008, pp. 44–45).

## **The Political Theory of Social Movements**

When social movement activists are evaluating their experiences based on their shared—or negotiated—value system, they are making political theory (Anderson, 2004, p. 5; Vincent, 2004, p. 9). When social movements are building alternative infrastructure, e.g., in agriculture, care work, or markets, they are creating political theory. Sometimes movements create new concepts—like the international peasants' movement La Vía Campesina (LVC) who coined the now widely used term food sovereignty, based on both the practices and the aspirations of their members. However, most of the time social movements, like academic theorists, redefne or repurpose already existing concepts or theories (Brones, 2018; della Porta, 2013, pp. 6–9; Desmarais, 2007, pp. 100–101; Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 71–72; LVC, 2018, p. 16). And there can of course be more than one theory within a movement. These political theories are created through the discussions, the activism, the alliances, the campaigns, and the organization of a social movement, or their *cognitive praxis* (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991), which prefgure a different world. Some movements explicitly share the political theory they create, while others only share it internally through their praxis. The leaders presenting the theory to the public, of course, infuence how it is framed, but they are not the creators—the movements are. The point of research into the political theory of social movements is both to critically engage with it and mobilize it to new contexts by documenting it. Santos highlights how what he calls *intercultural translation*—translating knowledge into different contexts—is a crucial part of the epistemologies of the south, as it allows ideas to travel further. Intercultural translation can be done by either activists or academics, but it requires a closeness with the context you are translating from (Santos, 2016, pp. 223–225, 231–232).

At the time of writing, I am halfway through my PhD program at the faculty of Political Science and Sociology at Scuola Normale Superiore, and for my PhD, I am collaborating with the Kenyan Peasants League (KPL) through a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach (Manzo & Brightbill, 2007, pp. 39–40; Redman-MacLaren & Mills, 2015, pp. 5–6; Wakeford & Rodriguez, 2018, pp. 23–25). KPL, a member of LVC, mentioned above, was formed in 2016 after mobilizations, around the WTO's tenth Ministerial Conference in Nairobi in 2015. KPL, as LVC, advocates for food sovereignty, agroecology,2 peasant feminism, and climate justice while fghting industrial factory farming and institutions such as the WTO and the IMF (Kenyan Peasants League, 2018). Since its inception, the KPL has been quite active within the movement and has, for example, completed a summer school on agroecology for local farmers in 2019 (LVC, 2019). So, the concept of theory

<sup>2</sup>Agroecology is in itself a contested concept. In its thinnest defnition is a set of principles for ecological and sustainable farming that places farmers in the center as it is meant to be adapted differently in different environmental settings (Bruil et al., 2019, p. 3). However, for LVC and other movements, using agroecology also has a political dimension: it signifes a democratization of knowledge and ownership, and a post-Cartesian approach to the world (Val et al., 2019, pp. 7–8).

created by social movements is a thought that has taken shape before and during this collaboration. Unfortunately, this specifc work is not ready to be presented just yet, so instead, I want to highlight an older example even closer to home, Steven Feierman's book *Peasant Intellectual* based on his feld work in the Shamba province of Tanzania between 1966 and 1988 (Feierman, 1990, p. xi). This example highlights that such work has been conducted for a long time, often in different felds, and that there is a lot to learn from communally made theory in general.

## **Indigenous Political Theory: Tanzania**

In his book *Peasant Intellectual*, Feierman analyzes the discourses and actions of the peasant community in Shamba province in Tanzania as an *indigenous political theory* that is multifaceted (Feierman, 1990, p. 21). The traditional notions of *harming the land* (*kubana shi*) and *healing the land* (*kuzifya shi*) were tied to the concept of power, and the notion of *power against power* (*nguvu kwa nguvu*): A centralized power (*nuguvu*) was seen as healing the land, as it could prevent confict and secure peace. On the other hand, having more than one locus of power (*nuguvu kwa nuguvu*) was seen as inevitably leading to confict and, thereby, harming the land (Feierman, 1990, pp. 6–8, 87–92)*.* This indigenous political theory is both challenging and agreeing with different westernized versions of sovereignty while also including the impact of human activity on more-than-human life3 (Feierman, 1990, pp. 91–92, 232–241). This highlights how much we will miss when we disregard the rich tapestry of the ecology of knowledge, in favor of using the same westernized theories, on, for example, sovereignty, for all contexts (Owusu-Ansah & Mji, 2013, pp. 1–3).

Most of the data are oral histories, or concepts passed down orally, which is why feld work was crucial to documenting this indigenous political theory (Feierman, 1990, p. 21). Feierman's book thereby underscores the need for scholars to be open to use different methods and open to different processes and presentations of theory (Feierman, 1990, pp. 7, 20–21, 70–87, 128; hooks, 1991, p. 4; Simpson, 2014, pp. 99–100; Thiong'o, 2012, pp. 72–81). Lastly, Feierman avoids appropriating this theory, by claiming that he discovered it, rather he is explicit about it being *taught* to him (Feierman, 1990, pp. 3–4). This is perhaps the most important takeaway, as I will show in the next and fnal part of the chapter. I believe that if we accept that social movements create both knowledge and theories, then this should also affect how we as scholars interact with this knowledge and these theories, as to avoid appropriating indigenous and locally held knowledge (Shiva, 2008, pp. 280–281).

<sup>3</sup>More-than-human life, a term borrowed from Zoe Todd (Todd, 2017), is a more specifc term for "nature." The way "nature" is frequently used separates humans and nature, as mind and body, and challenging this distinction requires placing humans within the concept of nature, which means it no longer exclusively refers to plants or animals, which is usually what is meant by the vaguer term nature.

## *Standing with Social Movements*

As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang write in their seminal text "Decolonization is not a metaphor," colonization is a material process, and therefore, decolonization requires a redistribution of power and resources, not only changing the way we talk (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 19). The decolonization of the research process of social movements therefore requires a participatory approach to the entire research process, to ensure that the project not only benefts the researcher, and to co-create stronger data that will beneft all the involved parties (Alonso, 2008, pp. 260–263; Arribas Lozano, 2018, pp. 455–458, 461; Manzo & Brightbill, 2007, p. 34; Mkabela, 2005, p. 184; Owusu-Ansah & Mji, 2013, p. 4; Smith, 2012, pp. 10–11, 187–189; Tallbear, 2014, pp. 3–6). As Kim Tallbear phrases it, we should not *give back*, as that connotes a strong separation but instead *stand with* the movements, or communities, we are working with (Tallbear, 2014, pp. 4–5). Moreover, we need to recognize the collaborative and relational process that research into social movements inherently is – we need people to consent to be interviewed, meetings to be open to observers, internal documents shared, etc. (Cox & Fominaya, 2009, p. 6). And without this collaboration, we could not do our job, so we need to make sure that we are not the only ones beneftting from this inherently unequal power dynamic. Part of taking a decolonial or participatory approach is building relationships that go beyond transparency, creating processes that are open and listening to the input of co-researchers and participants, both before and after we start co-creating data (Levkoe et al., 2018, pp. 8–11; Arribas Lozano, 2018, pp. 456–458; Martens, 2017, pp. 5–6; Mkabela, 2005, pp. 183–186; Morell, 2009, pp. 21–22; Tallbear, 2014, pp. 2–4). Recognizing that social movements create theory and knowledge is not enough – this should also affect the way we give credit to the movements; we cannot view ourselves as the discoverers of the knowledge we learn from social movements. We can mobilize this knowledge, chronicle this knowledge, and critically engage with it (Anderson & McLachlan, 2016; Choudry & Kapoor, 2010; Santos, 2016, pp. 219–220, 227–233, 245–246), which are important tasks, but we did not *discover* this knowledge the same way that Columbus did not *discover* the Americas. I will briefy demonstrate why the notion of *discovery* is problematic.

First, when knowledge is always co-created, it is not something that is just waiting to be unearthed by a researcher—it can be new to us and recreated with us, but it will always already be known to the people we are interviewing, observing, or participating with (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015, pp. 58–59, 62–63). Second, the notion of discovery is intensely linked with colonialism, and the notion that mountains, rivers, lakes, and certain species did not exist until a white person *discovered* them and wrote it down (Shiva, 2008, pp. 272–274). This goes back to the dichotomy of mind over matter, where women in general and the colonized in particular are seen as being too much in their body to truly have control over their mind and are often described in animalistic terms as people with no history (Fanon, 2004, p. 7; Mbembe, 2015, p. 13; Santos et al., 2008, pp. xxxv–xxxvi; Smith, 2012, p. 9), which in turn brings us back to the unspoken, division of labor between academics and activists, where activists are all action and academics all thought. Consequently, moving away from the dichotomy and the notion of the scholar as a discoverer means moving away from a notion that we as researchers are a necessary component for knowledge or theory creation to happen within social movements. We can facilitate knowledge or theory creation processes, as we often have more time and resources to devote than the activists in the movement, but this can easily happen without us (Morell, 2009). Social movements do not always *need* or *want* researchers to carry out this work, and it is important to respect that as well (Tuck, 2009, p. 423). Instead, we should view social movement activists as colleagues that have a lot to teach us about the work that they do.

Of course, not all researchers view themselves as discoverers, but the colonial mindset of westernized research still encourages us to go out and plant our fag in social movements and claim our scientifc discovery. We might use participatory methods or ascribe to constructivist epistemologies, but if we at the end of the day go home to our universities and claim to have discovered what social movement activists have taught us about and practiced for years, then it is still appropriation and erases the intellectual work of those activists. It is the difference between writing a book discussing the ideas of Karl Marx and writing a book claiming credit for discovering the concepts of economic base and superstructure. Discovery is closely linked to both patenting and property rights, of both land and knowledge, and questioning this logic of course means taking a completely different approach to authorship and ownership of knowledge, which leads to some very hard discussions with no easy answers (Alonso, 2008, pp. 257–259; Shiva, 2008, pp. 273–275).

To truly think of our work as collaborations, should then imply that we credit movements with some kind of co-authorship as the texts created are shaped by both scholar and movement (Anderson, 2020, pp. 283–285; Mkabela, 2005, pp. 185–187). There are of course institutional limitations to work around, in terms of what institutions, journals, or publishers will allow (Anderson, 2020, pp. 275–277, 289–291), and I am not claiming that this is easy to do or that I am doing it perfectly in my own work, but there are plenty of examples of scholars doing it. Either by explicitly coauthoring books or articles with activists, and the anthology 'Everyday Experts: How people's knowledge can transform the food system' (Anderson et al., 2017), with chapters written by academics and activists, is a great example. In general, within participatory research on agroecology, this is not an anomaly, probably due to the fact that agroecology is in itself a practice aimed at challenging hierarchal knowledge creation (Anderson et al., 2014; Ferrando et al., 2019; Martínez-Torres & Rosset, 2014; Val et al., 2019, pp. 7–8). Another way is by crediting the movement itself as Caitlin Cahil does in her chapter "Participatory Data Analysis," where on the frst page, next to her name, it reads "based on work with the Fed up Honeys" (Cahil, Based on work with the Fed up Honeys, 2010, p. 181). Discussing the pros and cons of these approaches would require a new chapter, so this is solely meant as inspiration.

Another aspect is access, and using open-source or creative commons publishing methods helps; the journal *Interface* is an example of being both open source and open to articles from activists (Interface, 2009). Widening access can also be done through rethinking the forms of presentation, where it is both easier to share authorship and easier to share it widely (Anderson & McLachlan, 2016, p. 308), for example, through podcasts, newspaper articles, photo-exhibitions, pamphlets, posters, videos, graphics, and the list goes on. The choice of which should not only be up to the academic researcher. Political theory takes many forms and so should its presentation. While such work often goes unrecognized within academia, in terms of career advancement, I do believe that we owe it to the activists that teach us about their work, to make sure that the research process is somehow useful in their work and give them credit for that work.

## **Concluding Remarks**

This chapter has aimed at showing that prefgurative social movements prefgure their own political theory through their cognitive practice, which is acted out through their cosmology, organization, and technology. Moreover, it has been shown that the westernized Cartesian approach to science, with its dichotomy between mind and matter, has hidden the ecology of knowledge that exists outside academia. The point of the chapter is to insist that we expand our notion of who creates political theory and what form such theories can take. Consequently, if we are truly to take social movements seriously as moral actors, we need to understand all the moral aspects of social movements, not only the mechanics. Lastly, it is crucial that we approach research into social movements as a collaboration with colleagues, rather than subjects to be studied whose knowledge we can "discover" and put our name on. We can act as translators and mobilize knowledge without appropriating that knowledge. Moving forward, we should defnitely rethink authorship, ownership, and credit, particularly when we conduct (participatory) research into social movement knowledge. Lastly, I want to address two points: Does this require us to always support movements? And why *political theory*, and not ideology, frames, or plain old theory?

It is very relevant to point out that it can be hard to use a participatory methodology and actively work to create knowledge benefcial to social movements whose goals we do not support (Tallbear, 2014, p. 5). It can be argued that this is an inherent shortcoming of participatory research; however, within a decolonial and feminist research paradigm, there are no other ethical ways of co-creating knowledge than through closeness and mutual respect (della Porta & Rucht, 2013, pp. 11–13; Wakeford & Rodriguez, 2018, pp. 40–41). Regardless of how we feel about their beliefs or their actions, research participants deserve basic human respect and our appreciation for enabling our research. But does that limit us to researching movements we disagree with from afar? Personally, I have taken the easy way out by collaborating with a movement whose ideals I share, but I think this is a rich area to explore that I hope braver scholars will delve into.

So, why *political theory*? First, classic social movement concepts such as frames or discourse capture some of what political theory does, but not all of it. Frames are

a communicative expression of that political theory, while the movement's discourses make up part of the movement's political theory (Eyerman & Jamison, 1991, pp. 68–69). Using frame or discourse would therefore only be telling part of the story leaving out the technological and organizational dimensions. Second, political theory is chosen rather than ideology, as ideology comes plagued with misconceptions and prejudices, and has often been seen as an object of study rather than thought to be engaged in dialogue (Vincent, 2004, pp. 66–67, 71; Walder, 2009, p. 406). Using political theory instead is thereby a way of rehabilitating the cognitive praxis of social movements within academia, as something that is both normative and to be taken seriously. To be clear, choosing political theory over ideology does not mean moving away from normativity, quite the opposite. I assume that all theory is normative and that creating theory is a universal human practice, but unlike classical western normative theory, I do not assume that reality can be explained *as a whole* (Grosfoguel, 2013, pp. 76–77, 88; hooks, 1991, pp. 7–8; Vincent, 2004, pp. 3, 19–21). Third, *political* theory rather than the broader *theory* or *philosophy* underscores that these theories are grounded in the political, in actively thinking about how we can shape our world to our ideals. Political theory is thereby somewhere between the completely abstract theory and the strict confnes and expectations associated with ideology. Of course, political theory is not an unproblematic term. Many will associate it with ivory tower-esque academia and with more sinister ways of controlling human life. However, by challenging the classic westernized Cartesian notion of (political) theory, hopefully this concept can be opened up and expanded. As Andrew Vincent argues, not only the "object" of theory but also the *process* of theorization should be opened up to critical scrutiny (Vincent, 2004, p. 2). However, this begs the central and fnal question: Does this knowledge need to be "rehabilitated" in the eyes of academia in the frst place?

First, I believe that we have an ethical responsibility to create space for indigenous and other marginalized knowledge within academia: When we take the theories and scholarship of indigenous, racialized, and other marginalized people seriously, it counteracts the dehumanization and epistemic injustice that western science has helped justify for centuries (Mbembe, 2015, pp. 13–17; Santos, 2016, pp. 233–235; Smith, 2012, pp. 214–215, 222–223; Todd, 2015, p. 251, Todd, 2016, pp. 9–10). Second, I do not believe that such a translation process is necessary for the movements to exist, thrive, or even for movements to conduct and disseminate their own research, but I do believe it is necessary for academia to continue to be relevant. In a time where we are frantically searching for solutions and answers to global crises and dilemmas, it is especially harmful to continue erasing, ignoring, or distorting the voices that are trying to show us the way forward. For example, while much of western academia is struggling with the concept of the Anthropocene and the ontological turn, the knowledge that life—both human and more-than-human life—is interconnected has been held by indigenous and racialized peoples and discussed with great nuance for a long time (Alonso, 2008, pp. 264–265; Smith, 2012, pp. 16–17; Todd, 2015, pp. 244–249, Todd, 2016, pp. 7–8). It is important that we not "give" a voice to the voiceless and instead start listening to what they have been saying all along and go from a westernized monoculture of knowledge to an

ecology of knowledge, where different knowledges interact and enrich each other (Santos, 2016, pp. 223–225; Santos et al., 2008, pp. xlvii–xlix). Moreover, the point of engaging with social movement theory is not to assimilate it with academic theory nor to hold it to the same standards (Maldonado-Torres et al., 2018, pp. 81–82; Wright, 2010, pp. 20–21). Classical theoretical coherence is to some degree necessary to understand the argument a theory is making; however, it is not everything as wa Thiong'o reminds us: "Poor theory may simply remind us that density of words is not the same thing as complexity of thought; that such density sometimes, can obscure clarity of thought"(Thiong'o, 2012, p. 3). This does not mean that we cannot critique such movements; quite the contrary critique is what keeps the iterative process going. Critique based in care, with the collaborative purpose of strengthening the movements, will bring academics, and perhaps academic theory out of the ivory tower and closer to the ground (Tallbear, 2014, p. 3; Thiong'o, 2012, p. 13).

## **References**


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# **Chapter 9 The Ethics of Radical Student Activism: Social Justice, Democracy and Engagement Across Difference**

**Gritt B. Nielsen**

**Abstract** This article focuses on student activism as an important site for the formulation and exploration of ethical dilemmas intrinsic to activist engagement across difference. In recent years, there has been a marked upsurge in student mobilization against inequality and social injustice within universities and in wider society. By drawing on ethnographic feldwork material generated with left-wing student activists in New Zealand in 2012 and 2015, the article investigates how two different student activist networks, in their struggles for equality and justice, navigate ethical dilemmas around inclusion and exclusion and balance universal moral claims against a sensitivity to situated ethical complexities and locally embedded experiences and values. While sharing the goal of fghting inequality, the two networks differ in their emphasis on the creation of 'dissensus' and 'safe spaces' in their network, their university and in wider society. The article draws upon two interconnected strands of theories, namely, debates about deliberative democracy, including questions of universal accessibility and inclusion/exclusion, and theories around ethics as a question of living up to universal moral imperatives (deontology) or as embedded in everyday negotiations and cultivations of virtues (virtue ethics). Inspired by Mansbridge, it proposes that central to radical student activism as an ethical practice is the ability to act as a (subaltern) counter public that not only 'nags' or haunts dominant moralities from the margins but also allows for the cultivation of spaces and identities within the activist networks that can 'nag' or haunt the networks' own moral frames and virtues and goad them into action and new democratic experiments.

**Keywords** Student activism · Deontology · Virtue ethics · Free spaces · Deliberative democracy · Dissensus · Safe spaces

G. B. Nielsen (\*) Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: gbn@edu.au.dk

## **Introduction**

Moral concerns and claims play a central role in student activism to promote economic and social justice. For decades, students in many countries have protested rising tuition fees and cuts to state subsidies, while recent years have seen a marked upsurge in student mobilization against the systematic marginalization or discrimination of certain bodies and voices within higher education and in wider society. Students not only target specifc institutional policies and practices but also challenge dominant moral orders for appropriate and desirable conduct, including what constitutes unethical and unacceptable forms of speech—in relation to teaching and learning activities, as well as to the academic and societal debate culture.

These movements have given rise to experiments in democratic forms of organizing, as well as discussions about (im)proper public debate and democratic deliberation. Some activists, for example, have endorsed an ideal of the university, and society more generally, as a 'safe space', that is, a place free from harassment and oppression where participants can feel safe, seen and heard. They request the use of 'trigger warnings' in the classroom and engage in 'no-platforming' actions, where student activists prevent individuals whose messages they perceive to be offensive or threatening from speaking at public events on campus.

These student activists argue that their actions to increase social justice allow hitherto marginalized and silenced groups to gain a voice and thereby strengthen the possibility for dialogue across difference, which is vital for democracy and critical academic thinking (cf. Ben-Porath, 2017). Critics, by contrast, have maintained that activists' use of the moral criteria of social justice and diversity to privilege certain kinds of bodies, speech and knowledge over others presents a fundamental threat to core Western values of free speech and democratic deliberation (George & West, 2017; Mason 2016; Slater, 2016) and risks leading the wider (student) population into increasingly fractious identity politics (cf. Zheng, 2017).

In the Global North, student activism to dismantle economic and social injustice has intersected and overlapped with wider social movements including Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, which, in different ways, are centred on moral concerns regarding how to create more just and equal societies. In student activism, as in these wider social movements, personal testimony and experience play a central role in the moral shaping of social and political ambitions, visions and conversations—but also in the frictions emerging within and between left-wing student activist networks.

This article focuses on student activism as a site for the formulation and exploration of ethical dilemmas around how to engage with others across difference. By connecting theoretical discussions of deliberative democracy with the question of ethics in activism, the article investigates how two left-wing student activist groups at the University of Auckland, in different ways, balance inclusion against exclusion, and universal moral claims against sensitivity to situated ethical complexities and locally embedded experiences and values. Communicative procedures and ideals in these groups' activist 'free spaces', differences in personal experiences of marginality, and the cultivation of activist virtues through the labour of organizing and collaborating across difference mediate and shape the student activists' ethical engagement. With inspiration from Mansbridge (1996), the article proposes that radical student activism as an ethical practice revolves around the ability to act as certain kinds of (subaltern) counter publics, namely, counter publics that not only 'nag' or haunt dominant moralities from the margins, but also allow for the continuous cultivation of internal spaces and identities that can 'nag' their own moral frames and virtues, goading them into action and to conduct important democratic experiments.

# **Deliberation, Counter Publics and Free Spaces: Ethical Dilemmas**

In my analysis of the ethnographic material from New Zealand, I draw upon two interconnected strands of theories: theories and debates concerning deliberative democracy, including questions of universal accessibility and inclusion/exclusion, and theories exploring ethics as a question of living up to universal moral imperatives (deontology) or as embedded in everyday negotiations and cultivations of virtues (virtue ethics). Accordingly, my discussion of the role of ethics in student activism is centred on the ethical paradoxes related to processes of deliberation within and across different forms of counter publics and free spaces.

The question of whether contemporary pro-equality student activism endangers or enlarges the democratic space and public debate within the university and in wider society clearly resonates with the debates surrounding Habermas' model of free deliberative democracy that frst emerged in the 1990s. In the following, I will therefore briefy outline some central theoretical positions in this debate and link them to methodological approaches to studying and understanding ethics.

In his historical-sociological analysis, Habermas (1989) argued that the newly established cafés and salons in eighteenth-century France, England and Germany provided the foundation for the emergence of a new form of bourgeois public sphere. Ideally, in this sphere, everyone could engage in unrestricted rational deliberation of topics of so-called common concern and conjure a 'public opinion' in society that could render the state accountable to the citizenry. The emergence of this new 'public sphere' was conditional on three interconnected 'institutional criteria' or ideas, namely, a disregard for status, the development of a domain of common concern and inclusivity in the sense that everyone had to be able to participate (Habermas, 1989, pp. 36f). In principle, therefore, the public sphere was a sphere of rational and universalistic politics where everyone could engage in deliberation as part of one single community. As indicated above, similar ideals of a public sphere that enables everyone in a liberal democracy to freely engage and speak, no matter their status, opinions or background, are at the centre of the critique raised against student activism in pursuit of greater equality and social justice.

However, important feminist critique has been directed at Habermas' deliberative model. The political scientist Iris M. Young (1996) has argued that the model's reliance on a notion of universal reason and rational argumentation renders emotional or experiential expressions illegitimate and privileges styles of speaking that are dispassionate, disembodied and general. Such norms of rational deliberation, Young argues, not only create a problematic distinction between reason and emotion, mind and body; they are 'culturally specifc and often operate as forms of power that silence or devalue the speech of some people' (1996, p. 123). Accordingly, changes in the communicative and procedural norms for deliberation—for example, the introduction of certain forms of greeting or the inclusion of personal storytelling—can allow different kinds of bodies, arguments and styles of speech to appear, be heard and taken seriously.

In a similar vein, the feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser (1990) has argued that the ideal of a bourgeois public sphere, open to all, requires a momentary bracketing of social inequalities, which, instead of securing equal access and deliberation, can mask various forms of domination. The ideal of free and unrestricted deliberation was never realized in practice, with a number of marginalized groups, including women, de facto excluded from the conversation. The public sphere of the eighteenth-century cafés and salons was limited to upper-class male actors 'who were coming to see themselves as a 'universal class", Fraser maintained (Fraser, 1990, p. 60). She criticized Habermas for idealizing the public sphere and failing to recognize how excluded groups form (subaltern) counter publics, such as womenonly voluntary associations. Rather than being bracketed in the public sphere, Fraser argued, inequalities should be thematized explicitly to draw attention to the ongoing contestations of what should be considered 'public' or 'common concerns'.

For Fraser, counter publics become spaces of 'withdrawal and regroupment', as well as 'bases and training grounds for agitational activities directed toward wider publics' (Fraser, 1990, p. 68). In this sense, the concept overlaps with the notion of 'free spaces' (Polletta, 1999; Evans & Boyte, 1986) in the literature on social movements. Free spaces are 'small-scale settings within a community or movement that are removed from the direct control of dominant groups, are voluntarily participated in, and generate the cultural challenge that precedes or accompanies political mobilization' (Polletta, 1999, p. 1). Allowing marginalized people to develop a voice and a vision, Evans and Boyte (1986) argue that such spaces are central to democracy:

Put simply, free spaces are settings between private lives and large-scale institutions where ordinary citizens can act with dignity, independence, and vision. (…) Democratic action depends upon these free spaces, where people experience a schooling in citizenship and learn a vision of the common good in the course of struggling for change (Evans & Boyte, 1986, p. 16–17).

Interestingly, some social movement scholars have called these spaces 'safe spaces' (see, e.g. Polletta, 1999), and as we shall see later, contemporary 'free spaces' in student activist networks sometimes explicitly connect to the quest to make higher education and wider society 'safe(r) spaces'. The dual dimension of counter publics and free/safe spaces of withdrawal and engagement in wider public activities is not without challenges. As Jane Mansbridge puts it (1996: 58), the dilemma is that 'the enclaves, which produce insights that less protected spaces would have prevented, also protect those insights from reasonable criticism'. In other words, on the one hand, free/safe spaces appear to be necessary in order for counter publics to emerge and formulate common concerns and visions. On the other hand, they risk closing in on themselves, developing a language not heard or understood by others and failing to engage in conversation across difference.

This, I argue, is fundamentally an ethical dilemma. It not only revolves around ideals for a well-functioning democracy but also relates to theoretical discussions about how to understand and promote ethical conduct. In social theory, there are at least two central approaches to such questions of morality and ethics. Durkheimian researchers understand ethics and morality as external normative constraints on behaviour. More recently, a growing number of scholars have, by contrast, explored the ethical and the moral as emerging in situated practices, unconscious habits and refective deliberations and, as such, strongly tied to the cultivation of virtues and personal character (see, e.g. Boltanski & Thevenot, 2000; Fassin, 2012, 2015; Klenk, 2019; Mattingly & Throop, 2018).

This difference, focusing on ethical conduct as either a question of living up to normative rules and moral imperatives or as emerging in the situated negotiation and cultivation of virtues, resonates with the distinction between deontological/duty ethics (with Kant as a main protagonist) and virtue ethics (developed from Aristotle, among others) in moral philosophy. While the former emphasizes ethics as a question of doing one's duty and living up to a moral absolute, the latter focuses on the kinds of desirable virtues and characteristics that a moral/virtuous person possesses. In the former, ethics are about obeying universal moral laws, discerned through reason and thereafter translated into practice. In the latter, ethics are cultivated and embedded in local practice and therefore contingent on the community in which they are generated and practiced. Ethics hereby become 'the subjective work produced by agents to conduct themselves in accordance with their inquiry about what a good life is' (Fassin, 2012: 7).

The ideal of the bourgeois public sphere is built on a universal moral claim, discerned through 'reason', in which citizens are to live up to normative ideals of free, rational and inclusive participation in the public sphere. By contrast, the abovementioned feminist critiques of this kind of universal politics seem to resonate with traditions of virtue ethics that understand ethics as embedded in everyday negotiations and contingent on the particular community involved.

In an analysis of the role of ethics in specifc student activists' lives and actions, the two approaches to ethics—and the contrasting views of deliberative democracy—are useful as analytical heuristics to tease out how various forms of ethical and moral claims and practices intersect infuence and shape student activist spaces. Understood as ethical work, radical student activism is about both contentious politics based on universalizing moral claims of social justice and the cultivation of collective and individual subjectivities and sensibilities, including a moral responsibility to act, that are embedded in particular forms of organizing, styles of speech and refective deliberations.

In the sections below, I use the theoretical debates surrounding deliberative democracy and ethics to analyse empirical case material from New Zealand. I pay attention to the ways that universalizing moral claims are balanced and negotiated with a sensitivity towards diversity and plurality. Furthermore, I examine the different ways that activists negotiate and enact the connections between knowledge, action and virtue in order to create a better world. First, however, I will briefy introduce the feldwork that forms the basis for the analysis.

## **Fieldwork with Student Activists in Auckland**

In 2012, I conducted 4 months of ethnographic feldwork with left-wing student activists at the University of Auckland who had been mobilizing against budget cutbacks and tuition fee increases, among other things. Over the past year, they had mobilized hundreds of students at various rallies and protest occupations. They had edited the student magazine and developed a number of workshops (on topics including facilitating meetings, the legal issues related to their activism and how best to deal with the media). They held regular meetings where they discussed and planned actions, had debriefngs after actions and continuously set up reading groups refecting different activist interests and needs.

As I will elaborate later, they worked from an ideal of 'dissensus' and the creation of plural but equal spaces for conversation. They experimented with organic, non-hierarchical forms of meetings and continuously discussed to what extent they should present themselves as a group/unity with a specifc name in order to better mobilize others and be recognizable, or whether to refuse this stabilization and categorization in favour of more diffuse, organic and fuid identities (see Nielsen 2019). In order to explore their political aims and ways of organizing, I participated in different protest actions (including a 'street party' and protests against fee hikes), followed their writings in the student magazine and on their Facebook page, conducted formal interviews with seven students who were involved in the actions (from organizers to more ad hoc activists) and had informal conversations with them and other activists and scholars at various academic and social events.

In 2015, I returned for a shorter 3-week stay. I reinterviewed three of the activists from 2012, who were still involved in student activism. They told me that a new group of activists, primarily from a queer background, had become visible on campus. I interviewed three students who were actively involved in this queer activist network. Whereas in 2012, the activist group strived to create spaces for the cultivation of *dissensus*, the queer activists worked from an ideal of turning their meetings, the university and wider society into *safe(r) spaces*. Among other things, they had pushed for gender-neutral toilets at the university and introduced pronoun rounds at meetings. They ran a reading group on queer literature and theory, were active in different debates on social media but were not involved in as many public actions as the students in 2012. As one of them said, there was not the same 'political momentum for protests' now as previously, where protests around tuition fees and the budget had mobilized hundreds of students. In this article, for the sake of clarity, I will refer to activists who were involved in 2012 (and in some cases were still active in 2015) as the older activists, and students engaged in the queer activist network as the newer student activists. To ensure anonymity, all names of student activists have been changed.

# **'Framing' a Common Moral Problem? Radicality, Solidarity and Deliberation**

In my interviews with both older and newer student activists in 2012 and 2015, they all, in different ways, conjured a wider moral frame revolving around economic inequality and social injustice through which they understood their own situation, specifc actions and the general problems or affictions in society. As Yasmin, a student activist whom I interviewed in both 2012 and 2015 explained, 'to me it's the question of inequality; that's what ties it all together'.

Many of the student activists I talked to in 2012 and 2015, including Yasmin, were involved in activist networks both on campus, focusing on university-related issues, and off campus, such as anti-gentrifcation activism or broader anti-capitalist, socialist movements. Therefore, in their *framing* – that is, the 'active, processdriven, contestation-ridden reality construction' (Snow & Benford, 1992: 136) that organizes experience and guides action in a social movement – they attempted to articulate and connect various struggles and experiences in a meaningful and unifed way. The shared moral framework revolving around economic inequality and social injustice made solidarity and interconnections between different struggles a central issue for the core group of student activists I talked to in 2012. As Nina, who was active in both 2012 and 2015, said:

Once you've done a lot of practical organizing, you just realize that we're all talking about the same problem. I mean, different iterations (…) We need to focus on the connections between different issues. People call it intersectionality (…) you can't really separate patriarchy from capitalism from racism from colonialism (…) Working out how to have solidarity with groups that you're not necessarily that central to, but you, like, entirely support, is really one of the most important things (Nina, student activist, 2015).

For Nina, *solidarity* as an ethical engagement became a question of extending the student activist framework to incorporate values and fghts that were not initially at the centre of their struggle. Solidarity, as she put it, is about:

Fighting one's own fght and fghting alongside others in their fght, which at a more general level is also your fght (Nina, student activist, 2015).

A given fght for equality, in this sense, is not merely to be understood as belonging to a specifc interest group. It is both universal and particular—belonging to everyone, yet a greater focus for certain groups who, for example, have personal experiences with that specifc form of inequality. Therefore, it is not simply a question of engaging *as if* it was your own struggle, but of realizing that, on a more profound moral level, it *is* your struggle—namely, a common and universal struggle against inequality, discrimination and oppression.

In light of the discussion around ideals of free deliberation in the public sphere, the students' quest for solidarity can be understood as an attempt to turn concerns that are otherwise deemed particular, subjective or private into common or public moral concerns (cf. Fraser, 1990). However, solidarity work and the conjuring up of a common moral absolute are both challenging and potentially risky. As Yasmin formulated it, the ideals of solidarity are not always compatible with a desire to be radical:

There's always tension in activism between solidarity, where you work across different groups without being exclusive, but also without compromising a stance of, like, radicality. (…) it's a tension between, like, being radical and exclusive or being inclusive and potentially, like, ending up being absorbed. If you're trying to be like completely inclusive, then you end up becoming part of the mechanisms that you're trying to oppose (Yasmin, student activist, 2015).

The continuous balancing between radicality and solidarity, described by Yasmin, can be understood in terms of what Barnett (2004) has referred to as a constant negotiation in activism between an urgent sense of a 'responsibility to act' and a more patient sense of a 'responsibility to otherness'. Whereas the former can be understood as an ethical call to act here and now to change the world, the latter urges caution and a sensitivity for and engagement with people and viewpoints that are different from one's own. The sense of an urgent need to do and to act seems conditional on a political standpoint characterized by unity/common identity. By contrast, the patient sense of a responsibility to otherness combines features of learning and knowledge production across difference and a stretching of one's 'self' (as an individual and/or group) to accommodate an otherness that opens up for alternative values and viewpoints, as well as for solidary engagement. Based on a clear identity and standpoint, the frst form of moral responsibility can be exclusive, whereas the second strives towards greater inclusivity and comes with the risk of diluting the focus, identity and framing of the struggle—and ultimately being absorbed into and thereby reinforcing the mainstream political system that one sought to change.

As noted, the two student activist networks with whom I engaged in 2012 and 2015 had a shared moral frame of fghting social and economic injustice and promoting the emancipation of marginalized people. However, they emphasized slightly different ethical virtues and values, in terms of the balance between inclusivity and exclusivity, unity and difference, and solidarity and radicality. As we shall see in the following, student activism can generate powerful counter publics, but the degree to which the activists speak from and emphasize a subaltern positionality varies greatly.

## **Balancing Dissensus and Safety: A Sense of Kaupapa**

The student activist networks in 2012 and 2015 continuously balanced and negotiated the degree to which they included and excluded other activist groups, as well as the broader student body. Tellingly, the older and the newer student activists evoked different organizational metaphors, signalling their different positions in society and at university. Their 'free spaces', accordingly, served slightly different purposes.

In 2012, the group of activist students were inspired by, among others, the French philosopher Jacques Rancière's notion of 'dissensus' (see, e.g. Rancière, 2010). As Jim explained:

We are working from the ideal of dissensus, understood as the possibility for diversity and the constant challenging of established hierarchies. We aim to create a dissent academia (Jim, student activist, 2012).

Inspired by Occupy Wall Street and similar movements, these student activists worked with the ideal of a non-hierarchical, organic and horizontal structure, with no leaders. In order to create more inclusive, diverse and socially just meeting spaces, they also experimented with progressive stacking and having older activists sit with newcomers, helping them to engage and explaining what was going on. They encouraged all interested parties to participate in their meetings and hoped for greater diversity in their group. Jim and the other core activists were mainly white (upper-) middle-class students, and many of them studied social science subjects.

Even though they continuously worked and hoped to attract activist students from more diverse backgrounds, they did not succeed in earnest. Minority students, one of them said, often have other networks where they work with like-minded students and target specifc minority-related issues. Nevertheless, Jim and his fellow activists seemed to feel a strong sense of 'responsibility to otherness' (Barnett, 2004)—an obligation to learn more about other ways of viewing and experiencing the world, especially those of marginalized and minoritized others, in order to better include such positions in what they saw as a common struggle against inequality (see also Nielsen 2019). At one point during a big open activist meeting, a white male participant criticized progressive stacking for discrimination and censorship because he was asked by a female student of colour to stop talking and start listening a bit more. Jim and some of the other core student activists disagreed with the male activist and his critique of progressive stacking. After the meeting, they decided to set up a reading group on gender and postcolonial theory to learn more about what it means to engage from a marginalized position (which was not their own position and experience as such). Thereby, they hoped to qualify their efforts to counter what they felt were problematic forms of race and gender discrimination within the activist network.

As mentioned, when I returned to Auckland in 2015, a new group of students had become central within the activist environment on campus. In contrast to the older students, this new network emerged around experiences of marginalization. One of the newer activists, Simon, explained that these activists:

Tend to be from a queer background, so very much identity politics background, but still have the same sense of politics of kind of emancipatory politics [as the older activists] (Simon, student activist, 2015).

Whereas in 2012, the student activists worked from an ideal of *dissensus*, Simon talked about *safe spaces* and explained that they organized their meetings in ways that reduced the threat of violence:

We do a pronoun round at meetings. It's basically a recognition of the fact that we want to make this world a … safe space (…) say if I called a drag trans-woman, like, he or him, it could make them feel incredibly unsafe, because there is that threat of violence, so basically making it a safe space (Simon, student activist, 2015).

The 'threat of violence', here, is both physical and verbal. These newer activists shared personal experiences with discrimination, read relevant literature and discussed how to make the university and wider society more inclusive and just. As explained by Mark, another student activist, who did not identify as queer himself, but who was part of this new network of student activists, 'the pronoun round is about creating a more inclusive environment for organizing political action'. In this way, the meetings also helped to create a safe (free) space in the sense found in social movement theories.

The notion of 'safe space' frst became prominent with the emergence of women's and gay and lesbian movements in the 1960s and 1970s. It points to the necessity for the members of marginalized groups of obtaining a 'room of one's own' (cf. Woolf, 1929) where one can confdently fnd one's own voice and engage in wider public debate and potentially plan social or political events with the aim of improving one's life as a minority. However, in recent years, the notion of safe spaces has proliferated to such an extent that it has been described as an 'overused but undertheorized metaphor' (Barrett, 2010: 1).

In addition to referring to an activist space in a movement or a dedicated physical place allocated to a group of minority students, the term 'safe space' is now also used as a teaching and learning metaphor to address appropriate communication and interaction in the classroom and on campus in a more general sense.1 This proliferation testifes to the emergence of a stronger counter public around questions of equality in public spaces as well as in teaching and learning. In the USA, for example, a growing number of students are now sympathetic to the concerns raised by minorities and recognize them as 'public' or 'common' rather than merely 'private' or 'particular' concerns (see, e.g. Palfrey, 2017, Ben-Porath, 2017).

The queer students' arguments for introducing pronoun rounds and their more general efforts to create a safe space resonate with the critique of Habermas' model

<sup>1</sup>As mentioned, the notion of safe spaces has recently played a central role in heated debates about the creation of non-discriminatory classrooms and campuses (see, e.g. Ben-Porath, 2017; Harris, 2015; Palfrey, 2017; Slater, 2016). As an organizing metaphor for communication and interaction, it involves, for example, the introduction of pronoun rounds and trigger warnings in class, and, in a more general sense, the promotion of an inclusive, non-discriminatory and emotionally nonthreatening environment for minority students on campus (see, e.g. Ben-Porath, 2017; the Roestone Collective, 2014; Rom, 1998).

of deliberative democracy raised by the political scientist Iris M. Young (1996). As mentioned, Young argues that the emphasis on universal reason and rational argumentation in Habermas' model privileges culturally specifc styles of speaking that appear 'objective' because they are dispassionate, disembodied and general. When the newer activist students introduce pronoun rounds, share personal experiences and advocate for safe spaces, they engage in activities that Young argues can open up the space of public deliberation. The use of certain kinds of greetings or the inclusion of personal storytelling can allow hitherto marginalized bodies, arguments and styles of speech to appear and be heard (ibid).

However, the ideal of safe spaces and the introduction of pronoun rounds also involve certain forms of exclusion. In these spaces, as Mark explained, they deal with sensitive topics and people, so there is always a concern as to whether or not they will be welcoming of people with diverse backgrounds:

There's an air of suspicion, and it's something that we need to work on—how do you verify that someone's not going to be, you know, prejudiced or bigoted towards anyone else that's already in the group helping out. You don't want someone who's racist kind of coming in and, you know, dismantling some of the group there or causing a ruckus, or an issue (Mark, student activist, 2015).

Whereas most of the older student activists were not from a minority background in terms of race or sexuality, the newer queer group clearly spoke from a position of marginalization. In order to create a space for conversation that is free of discrimination and harassment, they felt they had to be somewhat exclusive and, on occasion, establish separatist spaces. Nevertheless, they also wanted to be inclusive and to engage with other groups. When I asked Simon if he knew about the older activists' ideal of 'dissensus', he nodded and said:

I think that still happens—like this [the pronouns] is just a *prerequisite*. In order for this [dissensus] to happen, we need frstly, these are the ground rules and then I think that that [dissensus] happens anyway (Simon, student activist, 2015).

In order to create a genuinely inclusive and diverse environment where difference is acknowledged without reproducing existing hierarchies of people or knowledges, Simon argues that there is a need to set some new ground rules for how to engage with each other. Put differently, a certain ethics of conduct or virtue ethics needs to be developed. Simon used the Maori word 'kaupapa' to describe it:

Kaupapa (is) a general sense or purpose behind a movement or behind a group. Or like even just ground rules. And so, even in a situation of dissensus, I think there's still a kaupapa where certain things are acceptable. It's not acceptable to say racist things, you know. Sometimes it [kaupapa] is not said out loud, but you know there's a sense of it (Simon, student activist, 2015).

Kaupapa can be more or less explicit, but, in any group, there will always be some kind of kaupapa—a sense of purpose guiding their activities—enabling it to function, Simon argued. The sense of purpose that guided the queer group seemed to revolve around an understanding of ethical conduct as a question of emancipation. Simon described how he really liked the queer reading group he was part of at the university.

There's a good sense of kaupapa. I like that word. A good sense of how to treat each other. Not speaking over each other, letting each other talk. It's a very good fow. Very, like, emancipatory space.

Kaupapa connects virtue ethics with a sense of purpose and collective aspiration. Due to the kaupapa, in this case the establishment of a safe space, the participants experience a sense of emancipation, of being recognized as equal and being *free from* the control of dominant groups or what they experience as dominant norms and values that they do not adhere to or live up to. And it is because of the safe space kaupapa that they are able to cultivate dissensus, but a dissensus within a certain frame and with people who agree on fundamental moral values, codes of conduct and styles of speech. The question, therefore, is to what extent such values and styles of speech also enable them to engage with activist groups beyond their own. Here, their mode of organizing and differences in their practical experiences when organizing with other groups also seemed to play an important role.

# **A Virtue Ethics of Labour: Cultivation of Sensibilities Within the Everyday**

At one point in 2015, friction emerged between some of the newer queer activists and some of the older activists who had been active since 2011. Some of the newer activists accused some of the older male activists of homophobia and anti-Semitism. The disagreement and accusations developed and blew up on Twitter, which the older activist Nina described as 'a forum where you can fag off people without having to face them'. Yasmin, also an older activist, explained that the whole process had been:

Like making people out to be bad, and I mean there were some Twitter posts about the student movement (…) like a public shaming thing around particular people that had been involved for a while. It would probably have been resolved if it hadn't happened over Twitter (Nina, student activist, 2015).

Twitter functioned as vehicle for conjuring up a public moral evaluation of specifc people, judging them to be unethical or 'bad people' who discriminate against certain minorities. The older activists I talked to in 2015 felt that the friction was largely caused by a misunderstanding and the huge role Twitter and other social media played for the newer activists. Penny described it as being 'interested in politics the Twitter way' and argued that there is a huge difference between 'just posting on Twitter as opposed to, like, actually like being involved in organizing, doing the hard labor of organizing'. She felt that the newer student activists were involved more as a 'hobby' and that there was no 'discipline'. For the newer activists, she said, discipline had become an 'ugly word'. The newer activists did not hold regular meetings and had no ongoing activities; they did not organize or think about politics more generally, she complained.

People are not interested in committing to the labor … people thought of themselves as political but not in the active, laboring way (Penny, student activist, 2015).

The cultivation of a 'committed' and 'disciplined' self, who is willing to and capable of doing the 'hard labor of organizing', was at the core of Penny's activist virtue ethics. She also complained that, because the newer activists were not 'committed to the labor', there was a lack of skills and a lack of sensibility towards diversity in activism. They did not know how to make posters, talk to the media or organize a rally, and did not collaborate with other networks on the practical organization of actions. Comparing them to her own activist trajectory, she felt that the newer students were not 'subjectivated' into activism in the same way as she had been:

When I frst got involved, I didn't know anyone at all. So it was defnitely not based on friendship, which I feel like somehow it seems to be transformed into this. (…) as opposed to how we used to be, where if, like, people came together and they, we would spend hours in meetings just like (…) trying to work through things, like, and it took time, and it took work and a lot of, a lot of, like, energy went into things. And I feel like people perhaps have transformed politics into just theory or, like, and a group identity as opposed to something that you really have to work at and actions (…) But now it's like people are not organizing and activism is like something that you join. Not something that you get subjectivated into, I guess (Penny, student activist, 2015).

The development of a collective identity, common theoretical framing and friendship had also been important in Penny's own activist trajectory, but it was not the starting point. Rather, it was something that gradually emerged in and through the practical activist labour. Through long conversations and the tedious work of organizing, they developed particular virtues, both in terms of practical skills and for engaging across difference. Activist virtue, in other words, became a question of hard work and the acquisition of skills (cf. Widlok, 2012).

Importantly, the changing 'cycle of protest' (Snow & Benford, 1992; Tarrow, 1998) also seemed to play a role. Yasmin said that the friction between the newer and older activists had emerged in what she called an 'interim period between organizing' and argued that in activist circles you often get more confict and theoretical disagreements during such periods: 'If you are organizing, like, this is an issue, deal with this, deal on the spot', she said. Several of the older activists, like Yasmin, argued that a difference in age and experience with activism could also play a role:

… They're very young students and I was talking to my friend who's been involved in a lot of queer politics groups for a very long time. She was saying it does start off like when you organize around a particular, organize around identity, it very much starts off in that setting and it takes realizing that you actually have to organize with groups that might make you feel uncomfortable (…) it takes organizing with lots of groups of people to realize that sometimes you can't always be in a safe space or can't always be … your oppression can't always be the center of it, I guess (Yasmin, student activist, 2015).

In a similar vein, Penny argued that when you engage in practical organizing with others:

You realize that you have to compromise. You can't just tell people they're problematic (…) the language and practices you've incorporated in your meeting structures isn't as intuitive or necessary or appropriate in other spaces (Penny, student activist, 2015).

The focus on practical organizing and collaboration or solidary work with other groups who also promote greater equality seems to emphasize the kind of virtue ethics that the anthropologist Veena Das has described as 'ordinary ethics' (Das, 2012; Lambek, 2010). In 'ordinary ethics', Das says, the ethical

work is done not by orienting oneself to transcendental, objectively agreed upon value but rather through the cultivation of sensibilities *within* the everyday (…) Ethics and morality on the register of the ordinary are more like threads woven into the weave of life rather than notions that stand out and call attention to themselves through dramatic enactments and heroic struggles of good versus evil (Das, 2012: 134).

One could argue that the practical organizing across difference, described by Penny and Yasmin, cultivates pragmatic sensibilities towards others—an ethical sense of 'responsibility to otherness' (Barnett, 2004), which locates ethics within everyday activities that constantly challenge the universal moral imperatives around which radical student activism also revolves. The kind of practical labour that activists engage in therefore also affects the balance between 'radicality' and 'solidarity', exclusion and inclusion and the particular versus the universal in politics.

Yasmin considered the causes the newer students were fghting for extremely important. However, she felt that they often lacked a more general structural and class-focused analysis and that they had little experience with or desire to organize actions with other groups. Therefore, she argued, they risked becoming too insular. So even though Yasmin, Nina and Penny were sympathetic to the newer students' ambitions and causes, they felt that the ideal of 'safe spaces', when combined with a lack of 'labor', 'discipline' and practical organizing, was potentially problematic. Nina said that the safe space ideal sometimes, but certainly not always, led to what she felt was a 'culture of inwardness' and an overemphasis on personal experience.

Yeah, I think it may be a tendency in certain groups that focus on identity politics to focus, kind of, to really emphasize individual subjectivity. And also that's in the, in the service of affrmation of an identity, but [a] marginalized [one], and so it's really important, but I guess it can slip into a kind of almost neoliberal kind of motive of complaint where, you know, everyone's entitled to their own opinion and their own grievances. You can't really critique one another because if you are, you're, like, disrupting the safe space (…) But I think, I mean, I don't think that necessarily has to result in a sort of culture of, yeah, inwardness and things. But the thing is, it's really hard to make that critique, because it does come across as though you're, you don't really understand what other people are going through (Nina, student activist, 2015).

In addition to the reduced focus on class and the potential individualization and neoliberalization of grievances, Nina points to a central dilemma in contemporary student activism for social justice. On the one hand, the emphasis on experience, individual subjectivity and certain styles of speech is important in order to allow otherwise marginalized voices and positions to appear and take shape (cf. Young, 1996). On the other hand, however, ideals of 'safety' needs to be balanced against the risk of closing down conversation across difference and silencing people with alternative experiences and opinions. Here, the cultivation of activist virtues and forms of moral reasoning are also dependent on practical labour, the role of friendship and identity, and the ways of organizing within and across different activist networks.

## **Conclusion**

In recent years, the upsurge in student activism for social justice has increasingly been criticized for promoting a moral absolute that shuts down debate and threatens democratic values of free speech and critical thinking. In this article, I have shown how different groups of left-wing student activists at the University of Auckland continuously and refexively negotiate central ethical dilemmas and attempt to balance between solidarity and radicality, inclusion and exclusion and the evocation of universal moral claims and the development of a sensitivity towards particularity and otherness.

On a general moral level, fghting for 'equality' is a common denominator in the students' activism. However, different activist groups focus on different aspects of this problem—or 'iterations' as one student activist called it. In doing so, they constantly modify and balance common or universal moral quests against other forms of ethics that emerge from and are embedded in situated practices, experiences and negotiations. Based on their varied personal experiences with marginalization, different ways of organizing and shifting engagement with activist solidary work across difference, they create different (free/safe) spaces for the cultivation of ethical ideals, subjectivities and virtues.

In 2012, the student activist network worked from the ideal of 'dissensus', whereas the group of queer activists that were present during my feldwork in 2015 worked from the metaphor of creating 'safe spaces'. Even though they shared an overall ambition of fghting inequality and creating emancipatory spaces, their choice of metaphors refected their own experiences and positions within the university and wider society. The older group of activists were predominantly white, heterosexual, (upper-) middle-class students, while the newer group came from more marginalized backgrounds in terms of gender and sexuality. More than simply being strategic spaces for maximizing political infuence, the different 'free spaces' they provided were framed by moral and ethical questions and desires for creating a better and more just world. They therefore experimented with new democratic forms of organizing, new ground rules for meetings and new styles of speech.

These activist free/safe spaces are characterized by constant and paradoxical tensions between creating unity and recognizing diversity; between being radical and exclusive in thought and action and being more inclusive, solidary and engaging across difference. Importantly, an 'ordinary' ethics and cultivation of virtues and sensibilities through practical organizing also created a difference between the groups. For some of the older activists, the tedious labour of practical organizing, where you discuss and work with different people to act on the world, was a central virtue that enabled and compelled engagement with different viewpoints, making activists modify their own goals to accommodate associated struggles.

Both the older and newer student activists recognized not only the necessity but also the danger of working with relatively separatist (safe) spaces. On the one hand, such spaces are needed to allow marginalized people to fnd a voice of their own, thereby enabling them to engage in wider public discussions and turning what were hitherto perceived as personal or private issues into common concerns. On the other hand, there is a danger that such spaces become overly insular, with activists avoiding or shutting down conversations with people that have different opinions and experiences from themselves.

The students' continuous efforts to navigate these complex ethical dilemmas refect wider moral contestations about what characterizes legitimate (counter) publics and democratic deliberation. How can we best create democratic spaces that allow marginalized people to develop a voice but also encourage a wider conversation with majority positions? To borrow a phrase from the political scientist Jane Mansbridge, the dilemma is that 'the enclaves, which produce insights that less protected spaces would have prevented, also protect those insights from reasonable criticism' (Mansbridge, 1996, p. 58). Mansbridge argues, however, that the risk of groups closing in on themselves, becoming unwilling to hear anyone else and speaking a language that outsiders do not hear or understand, should not lead to the abolition of safe spaces or enclaves of deliberation. Such spaces are necessary for subaltern counter publics to take shape and gain confdence. Her point is that we can never achieve full justice since shifting power balances always create new forms of subordination. Therefore, she proposes:

We must design our lives and our institutions so that the justice that is compromised remains nagging, in the margin somewhere, in a bracket that does not go away, to pique our souls and goad us into future action (Mansbridge, 1996, p. 59).

One could argue that the shifting networks of student activists, acting as (subaltern) counter publics, have this function of continuously 'nagging' or haunting the morality of established institutions. However, as amorphous networks and movements, they also have margins themselves, which, if allowed to continue to nag, can play a central role in the shaping of their own moral frame and virtues and goad them into action.

At the heart of student activism as an ethical practice, therefore, is the diffcult and constant task of balancing universal moral claims with situated ethical concerns. A one-sided critique of contemporary student activism for engaging in extreme moralism that shuts down debate seems to ignore important dimensions of the students' engagement. Rather than merely being a site for the promotion of certain universal moral claims, student activism also functions as a site for the continuous exploration and negotiation of profound moral and ethical dilemmas concerning how to conceive of and engage with others across difference.

These dilemmas are not only of importance to the internal organizing and success of a given student movement but are intrinsic to democratic deliberation and organizing more generally. In this way, student activists' efforts to formulate and promote new moral orders and principles can be understood as a window onto core conficts regarding value and morality in wider society that are related to processes of deliberation within and across different forms of (counter) publics and free spaces (see also McAdam, 1988). Their attempts to navigate these profound dilemmas however tentative they may be—can offer important insights into how best to combine the cultivation of inclusive spaces for engagement across difference with the establishment of more exclusive learning spaces to secure the continuous development of critical voices and experimental democratic practices within higher education and in wider society.

## **References**


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# **Chapter 10 Moral Elites in the Danish Temperance Movement (1910–1919): Elite Struggles over Disease and Values**

#### **Anders Sevelsted**

**Abstract** The chapter maps out the elite of the early Danish temperance movement and shows how distinct moral elites within the movement interpreted the cause according to their respective value frames while integrating the emerging disease frame of alcoholism. Theoretically, it argues for introducing the thus far estranged perspectives of elite studies and framing approaches to each other. The concept of moral elite is consequently introduced and defned as an elite that is rich in the resources on which moral authority is built, here limited to educational resources, organizational resources, and publications. The chapter applies a mixed methods design. First, social network analysis (SNA) is applied to a unique dataset comprising biographical information on 28 temperance leaders found in the Danish Who's Who. The analysis reveals three distinct clusters within the temperance elite. Analyzing texts by the most prolifc authors shows that each of the three clusters has a distinct profle: an elite dominated by medical doctors and theologians who articulate a *traditional* value frame according to which medical doctors and pastors carry a responsibility for the community – a responsibility that is expanded through philanthropy and specialized institutions; a *revivalist* elite of theologians and laymen who pursue a revivalist Holiness and civil society frame emphasizing faith's healing abilities and the importance of organizing beyond the national church; and an *organic* elite that represented small farmers and workers and pushed an Enlightenment frame of direct democracy, rule of law, and education. The second part of the analysis shows how each elite cluster integrated the "alcoholism as a disease" belief frame in their value frames: traditional elites as a cause for institutionalization, revivalist elites as a reason to bolster the resilience in the population through faith, and the organic elite as a reason to promote self-care and education. In the fnal sections of the chapter, I tease out how the moral elite perspective may have implications for social movement research, especially in terms of holding movement elites accountable.

A. Sevelsted (\*)

Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

School of Social Work, Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: ase.mpp@cbs.dk

**Keywords** Moral elite · Temperance movement · Framing · Social network analysis · Mixed methods · Who's Who

## **Introduction**

The Nordic countries have been characterized by strong state capacity as well as strong social movements emerging in the nineteenth century. Especially the labor movement, revivalist movement, and temperance movement mobilized hundreds of thousands of people in countries with average population numbers of two to fve million. However, the "state + civil society" narrative misses how movement elites helped shape the movements, and while historians have pointed to individual leaders within movements, they have not been studied as groups in and of themselves.

This points to a larger lacuna in social movement research, where elites are recognized for their role in co-optation processes, as movement constituents, etc., but seldom studied as moral agents who promote certain interpretative frames over others.

In this chapter, I pursue the questions: *Who were the moral elites of the 19th and early twentieth century Danish temperance movement, and how did they integrate value and belief frames of interpretation in relation to the question of alcoholism?*

I begin the chapter by pointing out how research on elites in movements has been conducted largely unconnected to the literature on framing and interpretation. I then introduce the concept of moral elite as a way to bridge this gap, before I describe the case of the Danish temperance movement and show how I intend to analyze the case using social network analysis and interpretive method on Who's Who data and key texts, respectively. The analysis proceeds in three steps: frst, I introduce the SNA to show how three specifc clusters form within the movement elite, and I describe the characteristics of the clusters: traditional, organic, and revivalist. Then, I show how each cluster espoused different values: Patronal, Enlightenment, and Holiness/civil society. In the third and fnal analytical section, I show how each strand integrated the now prevailing "alcoholism as a degenerative disease frame" into their value systems. Finally, I conclude and discuss how the strategies pursued by the respective elites may have infuenced the fate of the movement.

## **Theory and Method**

## *From Elites and Frames to Moral Elites in Social Movements*

From the frst emergence of nineteenth century mass mobilization, scholars have noted how egalitarian movements inadvertently and incisively build organizational elites that do not share immediate interests with constituents or adherents (Michels, 1968 [1911]; Selznick, 1949). Researchers continue to pursue this line of inquiry in studies of co-optation and elite patronage (Holdo, 2019; Jenkins & Eckert, 1986). Others tend to understand movement elites through their capacity of "brokers" in diffusion processes (Tarrow, 2005; Tarrow & McAdam, 2005)—a perspective that is concerned mainly with the role of central actors in the spread of movements but does not consider this group as an "elite" engaged in a struggle over interpretive frames. Others have considered "movement entrepreneurs" within the movement or "conscience elites" outside the movement proper but have not been particularly interested in the question of movement elites (McCarthy & Zald, 1977). Few scholars have discussed the issue of elites directly and, when doing so, primarily with an eye to describing diffusion processes (Caniglia, 2002; Diani, 2000). In the connected feld of studies of revolutions, elites have played a role in terms of their support of or defection from a regime (Brinton, 1965; Moore, 1993; Tilly, 1978)—a role that has inspired elements of the development of feld theory (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012).

The discussion of elites and their relation to social movements seems to have been conducted mostly without linking to the part of the literature that deals with framing and interpretation in social movements, most prominently promoted by the frame alignment perspective of Snow, Benford et al. (Benford & Snow, 2000; Snow et al., 1986; Snow & Benford, 1988). Here, "interpretive orientations" between individuals and social movement organizations (SMOs) are aligned through the strategic use of interpretive frames by SMOs (Snow et al., 1986). In an innovative way, Michael Young has applied a similar approach in his studies of the emergence of the US American temperance movement, which he analyzes as a result of the merging of populist intensive schemas (or frames) for public confession and establishment extensive schemas (i.e., organizational schemas) for missionary work (Young, 2002, 2006). Importantly, these studies point to the role of populist vs. establishment moral schemas. By emphasizing the institutional and social origins of temperance schemas, Young breaks with a dominant paradigm in the study of the movement. With a starting point in Marx (Marx & Engels, 1979 [1848]), the temperance movement has widely been viewed as part of the "do-good" industry that either merely scratched the surface of social problems or served as a type of hegemony or social control (Banner, 1973). The perhaps most widely recognized study of the US American temperance movement found that the "morality" the movement espoused was mainly a means for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant groups to bolster their status position in society vis-à-vis Catholic immigrant groups (Gusfeld, 1963).

In the analysis, I will pursue to nuance the movement further in showing how the moral elites of the Danish movement belonged to conficting ideological projects and adopted value and belief frames differently. I propose the concept of moral elites as a way of bridging two thus far distinct research traditions in social movement research.

## *Theory: The Moral Elites of Social Movements and Frames*

The moral elite is the elite that has the resources and positions to articulate a specifc moral order. In principle, one could imagine a moral elite that based itself on sheer force—this is the Nietzschean moral elite that is de facto moral simply because of its societal position, without access to any resource to symbolic legitimation of this position.1 Early on, Weber denounced that such an elite could be found empirically (Weber, 1988).

More specifcally, moral elites can be defned as groups that can claim authority over the organization of moral orders in society with reference to symbolic resources that it controls in disproportionate amounts vis-à-vis the rest of the population (cf. Khan, 2012). The symbolic resources that moral elites have at their disposal are especially charismatic and knowledge resources. While charisma is an ascribed quality, it can be possessed and can present a source of moral leadership in religious as well as political movements (Pakulski, 2012; Weber, 1978). It is, however, feeting, and moral elites in most situations and societies rely on "priests" rather than "prophets" (Lang, 2001): guardians of institutions relying on "learned" knowledge about the symbolic grounds of authority rather than an intuitive insight into the realm of existential and moral secrets (James, 1982).

Continuing this line of reasoning, movement elites are not equivalent to the moral elites of a movement. A movement's leadership typically consists of groups that can muster different types of resources. Preliminarily, let us distinguish between *bellatores* and *oratores* (warriors and priests), i.e., between those who hold political, military, and economic power and those who hold cultural or educational capital (intellectuals). The third part of this "movement class structure," then, is *laboratores* (laborers) who hold few power resources (Bourdieu, 2018, p. 98, 2020, p. 36). While *bellatores* will often be necessary in order to muster "hard" resources for movements, *oratores* are crucial in shaping frames to resonate with different audiences. In the analysis, I focus on three types of such resources: educational resources, organizational resources, and publications as indicators of the ability to articulate moral principles.

Moral elites are characterized not only by the resources to which they have access but also by how they put these resources to use. Charisma and literacy are not simply resources on which to base claims to authority but also constitute resources for cultivating and pushing interpretive frames regarding ends and means. Snow and Benford refer to values and beliefs. *Values* imply the goal of collective action. In value amplifcation processes, SMOs emphasize certain values in order to bring them to the top of the agenda of possible constituents and adherents or to link the organizations' issues to values that are already at the top of the value hierarchy of possible "converts." On the other hand, *beliefs* imply the perception of means to reach the goals or "ideational elements that cognitively support or impede action in

<sup>1</sup>Mills contends that the US American elite of the 1950s is indeed Nietzschean in this sense (Mills, 1999).

pursuit of desired values" (Snow et al., 1986, p. 469f). Those involved in social movements hold beliefs about causality and blame, stereotypical beliefs about opponents, about the effcacy of action, and about the necessity to mobilize (ibid., 470). Benford and Snow's distinction between values and beliefs is mimicked in the broader institutional literature, even if the nomenclature varies (e.g., principled and causal beliefs) (Goldstein & Keohane, 1993; Haas, 1997; Münnich, 2010).

Values and beliefs, importantly, are embedded in larger ideological struggles for hegemony (Gramsci, 1989). Moral elites are essential in infuencing how movements may resonate with specifc ideological projects. A value such as *health* can be made to resonate with conservative as well as progressive projects – a healthy society as an organism in balance, or a society that provides healthy meals for all children regardless of background. Similarly, the role of beliefs in movements is not limited to holding certain actions to be feasible or not but also to interpreting the "factuality" of the social sphere in which movements are operating. Certain groups have power of nomination (the power to name) and institution (the power to institute social orders)."Stating that "there are two social classes" is not merely a statement of fact but similarly an intervention; a performative act of nomination and institution that helps bring about these two classes—if one has the authority to do so." (Bourdieu, 2018, p. 23). Beliefs also entail techniques: the types of intervention believed to produce a certain result (Foucault, 1998; Mannheim, 1940).

The moral elites are in this way engaged in a struggle over values and beliefs, with consequences for what kind of normative and causal frames are successful over time and what actions are taken on the basis of these interpretive frames. Social movements typically have a wide repertoire of collective actions and interpretive frames to engage with, and the moral elite of the movements plays a crucial role in furthering certain types of value, belief, and action rather than others. In Denmark, different parts of the moral elite were engaged in the struggle over how to interpret alcoholism; this entailed the question of how to embed causal beliefs in value beliefs—an embedding that ultimately had consequences for the outcome, the actions taken, and the long-term survival of different strands of the movement.

## *The Case*

In the Nordic countries, as well as elsewhere, the temperance movement was one of the three major popular movements of the nineteenth century, along with the labor movement and the revivalist movement. All three movements followed Michels' "iron law" to some degree: the labor movement soon after its inception followed Bernstein rather than Marx in that it would pursue a reformist parliamentarian strategy rather than a revolutionary strategy, and the revivalist movements which, in the frst half of the nineteenth century, were led by laymen would largely be co-opted by priests and remain within the national churches (except partly in Sweden). Similarly, the temperance movement emerged in the frst half of the nineteenth century, especially in connection to Methodist circles, but its breakthrough happened

during the second half of that century as pastors, medical doctors, and similar groups took up the cause (Eriksen, 1988).

These movement elites would not only to a large extent control the resources and strategies of the movements but also the interpretive frames through which to understand the plight of their constituents or target groups, i.e., the moral principles on which the organizations acted.

In Denmark, the temperance movement reached its zenith in 1917 when approximately 200,000 individuals, equivalent to 7% of the Danish population, were members of a temperance organization (Eriksen, 1988, p. 253; Gundelach, 1988, p. 156). The largest organization was the mainly secular organization The Danish Abstinence Association (*Danmarks Afholdsforening*) with ca. 67,000 members in 1911. The lodges, IOGT and Nordic IOGT, gathered the second largest following, while the revivalist Christian organization The Blue Cross became the third largest group with 32,866 members in 1917. Besides these were minor organizations for women, Catholics, medical doctors, students, and other groups.2

The movements thus experienced most of their growth during the "provisional era" (ca. 1877–1901). This was a time of heightened confict where conservatives and progressives struggled over the principle of parliamentarism: whether the king or the democratically elected parliament had the right to appoint the members of government. During this period, the national budget would unilaterally be approved by the king's government through provisional laws, i.e., without parliamentary control. Any mobilization would thus inevitably be on one or the other side of this struggle over democracy—and align the frames of their movement accordingly.

Today, the temperance movement has all but disappeared in Denmark, as it has experienced a continuous decline in membership since the introduction of a steep tax on distilled spirits in 1917. The sole survivor is the originally less affuent revivalist organization Blue Cross that continued in existence as a service provider for the state. This outcome can partially be explained by the interpretive efforts of the early moral elite of the movement.

## *Method: SNA and Interpretivism*

In order to show how elites infuenced moral frames in the Danish temperance movement, I combine social network analysis with qualitative hermeneutic methods.

I defne the temperance elite population as the individuals accepted into the Danish Who's Who (*Blå Bog*) with stated organizational ties to the temperance movement. The Danish Who's Who has been published annually (with few

<sup>2</sup>As has been shown by Eriksen and Bundsgaard, the temperance movement in Denmark cannot merely be seen as a disciplining tool of the upper classes, since membership records of local chapters show that craftsmen and other working class groups are heavily represented—also in the leadership. The movement should thus be interpreted more as a kind of self-disciplining by the working classes (Bundsgaard & Eriksen, 1987).

exceptions) from 1910 until today. I have selected individuals from the 1910 to 1919 editions. They were found through a search based on a list of 16 Danish temperance organizations collected by a contemporaneous source (N. Dalhoff & Jørgensen, 1911). The start of the period becomes somewhat fuzzy because the biographical entries reach back to the beginning of the careers of the individuals.

Arguably, the Who's Who is not merely a sample but can be treated as population data, i.e., assumed to include the entire elite at a given point in time. There has been some discussion in elite research circles over inclusion criteria (Hoffmann-Lange, 2018). Essentially, this debate concerns a positional and a reputational approach. The positional approach claims that the elite consists of individuals who hold formal top positions in organizational hierarchies within specifc infuential sectors (Mills, 1999; Mosca, 1939; Scott, 2008). The reputational approach, on the other hand, claims that formal representation may not mirror actual infuence and that estimates by elite "insiders" are actually more accurate criteria (Hunter, 1953). Social network analysis approaches can be said to represent a middle road between the two, including central individuals in formal network positions (Ellersgaard et al., 2013; Larsen & Ellersgaard, 2019). The Danish Who's Who includes individuals based on both criteria. It rests on a large number of publications on the elites within different sectors in Danish society, but the editors have also had the discretion to include individuals based on a wider "publicity" criterion—those "whose careers would be of interest to a wider circle. And we have paid special attention to those men and women who have contributed to large organizations" (Kraks blaa Bog: tre tusinde nulevende danske Mænd og Kvinders Levnedsløb indtil Aar *1910*, 1910, p. 5, my translation). Moreover, the mere fact of being in the Who's Who adds to the "eliteness" of an individual, thus adding a performative aspect to the publication (Friedman & Reeves, 2020). Ca 3000 persons were accepted into these frst editions. Each of the accepted persons flled in a questionnaire to provide information on their occupation, organizational affliations, place of residence, etc.

Building on the theoretical defnition of moral elites, the moral elites of the temperance movement can be distinguished through a set of indicators. First, "moral resources" in the form of education that provides a basis for moral authority: university degrees in relation to social and human science in particular, but also journalism and self-defned "authorship." Second, occupation in a position within an organization that in itself provides a platform for moral authority: schools and educational institutions, political parties, religious organizations, professional boards, medical positions, etc. Third, publications on themes related to the cause at hand: temperance.

I have applied these indicators by frst searching the Who's Who database for organizations and variations of words known to be central to the movement such as sobriety, temperance, templar, and Blue Cross.3 Thirty-seven individual biographies

<sup>3</sup>Danmarks Afholdsforening, Danmarks Storloge af Independent Order of Good Templars, Nordisk Good Templar Orden, NGTO, IOGT, Danmarks Good Templar, Templar Ordenen, Evang. Afholdsforening "Det Blaa Kors", Afholdssamfundet, Samfundet til Ædruelighedens Fremme, Danmarks studerende Ungdoms Afholdsforbund, Danske Lægers Afholdsforening', Katholsk Afh., Danske Kvinders kristelige Afh., Det hvide Baand, Independent Order of Rechabites.

were identifed. Ten were excluded because they had either no connection to the movement or were affliated only with local chapters. One person was added who had not included his temperance affliation in his biography. This leaves 28 individuals with a total of 220 organizational affliations. The SNA was done using Gephi software.

The qualitative part of the analysis is based on readings of publications by representative and prominent individuals within each cluster.

# **Analysis: Three Moral Elites in Temperance—Integrating Disease and Values Frames**

In the following section, I will frst map out the structure of the temperance elite in order to focus on the moral elite of this elite.

## *The Moral Elite Temperance Network*

Let us break down the composition of the temperance elites that are registered in the Danish Who's Who 1910–1919. Using Gephi's modularity function, six distinct clusters were revealed (Fig. 10.1). Figure 10.1 is a two-mode network consisting of organizations and individuals with more than one connection to others in the network. This means that all organizations that are only connected to one individual are hidden, leaving those organizations with most integrative force.

The three isolated islands (bottom right) represent (1) the White Cross, a temperance organization for women, of which Thyra Jensen was a board member. She is the only woman in the population and central in the women's movement, (2) the Methodist Evangelical Temperance Association, represented by founder Anton Bast, and (3) the IOGT, represented by Henrik Voss, the organization's so-called Grand Templar.

The analysis will focus on the three large clusters. One forms around the initially Copenhagen-based evangelical temperance organization Blue Cross (*Blå Kors*), along with the revivalist organizations Copenhagen Church Foundation (*Det Københavnske Kirkefond*) and Copenhagen Home Mission (*Kirkelig Forening for indre Mission i København*) (left-hand cluster).

The largest component in the middle is centered around the largest temperance association at the time, Danish Abstinence Association (*Danmarks Afholdsforening*), as well as organizations associated with the social-liberal wing of Danish politics: the Liberal Association in rural town *Hjørring*, the Association of Liberal Newspapers in Denmark (*Foreningen af Venstreblade i Danmark*), the

**Fig. 10.1** Who's Who of temperance leaders. Six clusters

Social-Liberal Party (*Venstrereformpartiet/Radikale Venstre*),4 the Peace Association (*Dansk Fredsforening*), and the liberal students' association *Studentersamfundet*. The temperance organization The Abstinence Society (*Afholdssamfundet*) also belongs here as the urban branch of the progressive temperance movement.

The third cluster on the right side has the Society for the Promotion of Sobriety (*Samfundet til Ædrueligheds Fremme*) at its center but also includes associations for combatting tuberculosis (*International Tuberkulosebureau i Berlin*) and crime (*Dansk Kriminalistforening*).

Only three organizational ties connect the three clusters: the Students' Abstinence Association (*Studenternes Afholdsforening*), the board of the Copenhagen Public Libraries, and membership of one or two of the Sobriety Commissions appointed by parliament. This is indicative of the type of education and expertise that characterizes the moral elite (see Fig. 10.2 for a representation of the most important organizations, weighted by degree of connectivity).

In the network, moral authority abounds. The individuals score high on the three indicators introduced above. First, education: of the 28, 17 have university degrees or similar, or higher. Another four work as authors or are trained as journalists or teachers. The remaining seven have apprenticeships, farming education, or private

<sup>4</sup>The farmers' party *Venstre* was split up during the 10 years of constitutional battle leading up to the breakthrough of the principle of parliamentarism in 1901. First, *Venstrereformpartiet* and since *Radikale Venstre* broke with the party, aiming to represent smallholders and urban progressive social-liberals.

theological degrees (Methodist)—or they have been trained on the family farm or in public service (public railroads).

Second, organizational platforms for moral authority include, in this case, Christian, philanthropic, political, and educational affliations. While religious and philanthropic affliations are recurring in the two religiously dominated clusters, the large middle cluster is rich in affliations to the *Bildungs*-oriented so-called people's folk high schools (or people's high schools) for the rural youth, as well as political affliations especially to the social-liberal party. Here, six people5 are represented in either the frst or second chamber of parliament (one for the conservative *Højre*). One may also argue that occupying a central position in the temperance movement is an indicator of "moral eliteness."6

The third indicator of moral authority is publications. Here, we fnd marked differences. Twelve have no or few stated publications, 5 have publications not immediately relevant to the temperance cause, while 10 have signifcant publications on the temperance cause. The 10 are represented in all of the three main clusters and can be said to represent the utmost elite of the temperance moral elite. Consequently, the analysis will focus on this group.

In the analysis, I describe the three clusters in more detail and show the dominant value and belief frames in each. I illustrate the organizational affliations of each individual through EGO networks where individuals are colored red, temperance organizations green, and other organizations purple. The organizations' names are in Danish, and the most important organizations are explained in the text.

**Fig. 10.2** Organizations in the moral elite network of Danish temperance 1910–1919. Size of nodes and labels refect degree of connectivity

6However, a person like Carl Borgen, industrialist and philanthropist, can hardly claim to be part of this elite, as he seems to contribute mainly with organizational and fnancial skills.

<sup>5</sup>Heilesen only in parliament from 1920.

# *The Moral Elites' Value Frames: Enlightenment, Tradition, and Revivalism*

The *frst*, large cluster around the Danish Abstinence Association and the Abstinence Society connects primarily with organizations related to the social-liberal farmers' movement but also the urban social-liberal movement. In terms of educational resources, this cluster is the most diverse as it includes the less educated farmer class as well as a law degree (Heilesen), a humanities degree (Trier), two teachers (Nielsen-Svinning, Nielsen-Grøn), a theologian (Sørensen), and a medical doctor (Ottosen). Organizationally, it is by far the best represented in the parliamentary chambers, where the farmers make up for lack of education. The most prolifc authors in this cluster are Heilesen, Trier, and Ottosen.

The arguably strongest articulation of the cause was put forward by C.C. Heilesen (Fig. 10.3), the leader of the Danish Abstinence Association 1921–1924 (i.e., after the period analyzed here).

Heilesen is symptomatic of the organic social-liberal elite. Trained as a lawyer, he would become an attorney with the supreme court in 1927. He was active in the peace movement and the cooperative movement and was born in *Hjørring* in Northern Denmark.

He explicitly couched the cause in democratic terms: temperance was a cause by the people for the people. In 1929, Heilesen published a text to commemorate the Danish Abstinence Association's 50th anniversary. The publication carried the subtitle "local self-governance, immediate rule by the people, carried by Enlightenment and Education" (Heilesen, 1929).7 This subtitle indicated Heilesen's view of the congruence between ideology and strategy that had characterized the organization from its beginning: it had worked to allow local parish referendums on the question of banning alcohol distribution and consumption, just as it had worked for national referendums (ibid., 6). While referendums were part of a strategy also pursued by the conservative factions of the temperance movement, to Heilesen it was clearly

<sup>7</sup>*"*Stedligt selvstyre, umiddelbart folkestyre, baaret af oplysning og opdragelse."

part of an ideology of direct popular rule—and rule of law. In other writings, Heilesen strongly advocated the principle of referendums as a way of strengthening parliamentarism through the means of direct democracy. Invoking Rosseau and the Swiss system of direct democracy, politicians were cast as envoys for the people rather than merely its representatives (Heilesen, 1926).

Herman Trier (1855–1912) (Fig. 10.4), educated in the humanities and specialized in pedagogics, founder and chairman of the Abstinence Society, represents the urban part of this social-liberal cluster. He was politically awakened during the constitutional struggle (ca 1877–1901) and became chairman of the social-liberal Students' Society and Radical Left Party. He spearheaded the study of pedagogics in Denmark.

Trier had taken the pledge of sobriety in solidarity with workers and had cofounded the Society with Social Democrat A.C. Meyer (1858–1938) and medical doctor Michael Larsen (Marstrand, 1936, p. 52). Trier and Meyer would give talks on the effect of alcohol on the body at events organized by local trade unions (Trier, 1902a). Trier argued consistently that the temperance cause was an Enlightenment question (Trier, 1902b, p. 553). It was crucial that children learn not only abstain but also learn about the reason why they should abstain from alcohol consumption (Trier, 1892, p. 359).

The social-liberal moral elite thus pursued two complementary value frames: a frame of popular rule, where alcohol consumption would be banned through direct democratic means locally and nationally, and an Enlightenment frame to educate the population—young people, women, workers, etc. While the democratic Enlightenment proponents did use other techniques such as the temperance pledge and later on also treatment facilities, these were not the central frames pushed by this moral elite. Their treatment facilities came late and were short-lived, and the pledge seemed merely to be an integrated part of being a "man of abstinence." This

**Fig. 10.4** Herman Trier's EGO network

was radically different in the ideology of the other parts of the temperance elite.

*The second cluster* around the Society for the Promotion of Sobriety is the least well-represented group with only fve directly associated individuals. Characteristically, these are three medical doctors, a theologian, and a lawyer. Organizationally, the cluster is dense with philanthropic associations to combat diseases, mental disability, and social illnesses. By far, the most prolifc writers were Dalhoff, who wrote on theological issues related to temperance and philanthropy in general, and Geill who wrote on the physiological aspects of alcoholism, criminality, and insanity.

This group was not proponents of a particularly strong political ideology or revivalist theology, but either fulflled obligations traditional for their professions or were "practitioners" who had worked closely with the subjects of their cause. Christian Geill, a medical doctor and leader of the Society 1898–1910, started his career working at mental hospitals and as a prison physician. He eventually became a member of several commissions and charities on sobriety and on the penal system (or criminal care, *kriminalforsorgen*). N.C. Dalhoff (Fig. 10.5) was co-founder of the society. He was born in Copenhagen and found his calling when working in an insane asylum. He became especially involved in the diaconal movement.

Dalhoff was the ideological beacon of the organization. In his programmatic book, *Go and do likewise!*, he emphasized with reference to the parable of the Good Samaritan that "Christianity is practical" (Dalhoff, 1900, p. 1). He stressed that pastors should serve their congregation and showed how deaconry (for which he had found inspiration visiting pastor Friedrich v. Bodelschwingh in Betel near Bielefeld in Germany) shared commonalities with secular philanthropy, Christian socialism, and the evangelical Home Mission, all of whom sought to improve the lot of humans. However, the society differed in relying partly on other principles: spirituality visà-vis secular philanthropy, mercy vis-à-vis justice, and, fnally, deaconry was not missionary work, but missionary work would often be the precondition for deaconry (ibid., 23–27). This is emblematic of this type of traditional moral elite: temperance was part of the obligations of the priestly estate—an estate that needed to act on the example of Jesus rather than become caught up in theological discussions.

Dalhoff not only talked about the example of Jesus but also sought to follow it, contributing to the foundation of treatment facilities ("salvation homes") for

alcoholics during the 1890s. Through the *Diakonissestiftelse*, Deaconess Foundation, he was active in setting up specialized treatment facilities and philanthropic institutions for children, epileptics, the chronically ill, tuberculosis patients, and prostitutes. Later, he would found the organization Work Ennobles to combat begging and homelessness, Fatherless Youth to provide education for orphans, the philanthropic Stefanus Association, Cooperating Congregational Care, as well as a number of causes for children, the mentally disabled, and the deaf and mute.

All of this work has a decidedly philanthropic character and is carried by the estate habitus of the traditional elite. The moral responsibility of this elite was a generalization of the local pastor's responsibilities in the old society. It was a *vertical* responsibility of the clergy to care for the least fortunate among the congregation. This was not a revolutionary ideology intended to break with old ways of caring for the poor. Rather, it was reformist, building on the national church structure to broaden the responsibilities of the congregation. For centuries, the local pastor and physician had taken part in healing the social illnesses of their local communities. The elite involved with the society can be viewed as lifting this local responsibility to the national level.

The *third cluster* around Blue Cross, the Home Mission, and the Church Foundation is constituted by theologians and revivalist laymen: three theologians and three well-known academic revivalists (an MD, an archeologist/librarian, and an economist), and an industrialist. Organizationally, they are highly involved in philanthropy, but like the second cluster not in national politics. In terms of publications, the most prolifc are the laymen Harald Westergaard (economist) and H.O. Lange (archeologist-librarian).

This cluster in many ways built on the work and thoughts of the moral elite of the second cluster, but its members were indeed more radical. Based in Copenhagen—a city that in the dying decades of the nineteenth century experienced a wave of Reformed populist evangelical revivals—many were less anchored in the established structure of the national church than the traditional elites. Lange, Mollerup, Westergaard, Koch, Juhl, and Ifversen all had close ties to Blue Cross8 and were all part of a many-faceted revivalist movement with inspiration from the UK and the USA. While Lutheran by confession, this group touted ideas from Christian Socialism, the Holiness Movement, and Methodism.

The Evangelical Alliance frst brought the Holiness ideas to Denmark when they held their eighth World Conference in Copenhagen in 1884 (Olesen, 1996, 231). The alliance did not survive for long in Denmark, but the ideas they brought with them resonated greatly in revivalist circles, and Mollerup (Fig. 10.6) became leader of the Danish branch. Very briefy described, Holiness ideas are about the possibility for people to improve themselves by accepting the Christian message. In this way, a sanctifcation in this life is possible, and one can leave the sinful "old Adam" behind and live a life approaching perfection. This line of thought can be traced

<sup>8</sup> In Who's Who, Koch does not mention the Blue Cross directly, only its treatment facility Enkrateia.

**Fig. 10.6** Mollerup's EGO network

**Fig. 10.7** Lange's EGO network

back to count Zinzendorf (1700–1760), associated with the Moravian revival, as well as founder of Methodism John Wesley: "Exactly as we are justifed by faith, so are we sanctifed by faith" (Wesley, 2013, p. 236).

Since Jesus had bled on the cross for all humanity, grace was universally available, sin had already been taken away, and man had only to embrace what had already happened—he was free to choose not to sin. Some used the phrase "Christian perfection" and counted the days since they left behind their old being and stopped sinning, while others talked more subtly about "liberation" from sin rather than total freedom. For the adherent of this doctrine, sin ceased to be a problem.

As can be seen from the social network, the leaders of this part of the temperance movement were strongly connected to the Copenhagen branch of the Home Mission and the Church Foundation. This group represented a new generation of the Copenhagen revivalist milieu. Many of them became infuenced by Holiness teachings. Archeologist and chief librarian at the Danish Royal Library, H.O. Lange (Fig. 10.7), and pastor H.P. Mollerup co-founded Danish Blue Cross as part of their religious engagement based on Holiness ideals. The latter also co-founded the Holiness-inspired Church Army in Denmark. Mollerup and Lange had picked up on the Holiness-based type of temperance work when one of the International Blue Cross leaders, Arnold Bovet, visited them in the late 1880s (Juhl, 1920, p. 6). Bovet claimed that he had been cured from his physical disability during a stay at the Holiness retreat *Männedorf* near Zürich (Blauenfeldt, 1924, pp. 22–31). The Blue Cross founders had also encountered the temperance movement during travels to London and other larger European cities (Eriksen, 2007; Lange, 1955a, p. 296f).

The Church Foundation in Copenhagen is another organization that unites this group. This organization was dedicated to building new churches in an expanding Copenhagen. Here, Wesleyan ideals of synods and church discipline fourished. This group (Koch, Lange, Westergaard, and two medical doctors: Friis Hansen and Ussing) engaged in a lengthy exchange of letters in a group called "Ringen" (the Ring). Lange here explicitly contrasted Wesley's Methodism to the Danish Home Mission revivals—a comparison that was entirely in Wesley's favor because of his superior organizing skills (Lange, 1955b, p. 68). These churches within the church were to be organized as part of the national church—at least for the time being (Bach-Nielsen & Schjørring, 2012, pp. 501–502). The idea was that the pastor and true believers in the congregation should seek out each other and together constitute an active unity that would uphold strict moral standards, combining traditional elements (the congregation) with modern elements (the association).

The urban cultural elite would, however, soon found associations outside the church. Westergaard would engage in the Christian socialist cause through the association The Association for the Promotion of the Proper use of Sundays (*Foreningen til Fremme af Søndagens rette Brug*)—a very direct way of using Christianity to champion worker protection.

The Blue Cross relied heavily on the associational principles of the "Anglo-Saxon" Holiness revivals. These revivals came to Protestant Europe with a burgeoning associational life that enforced the kind of moral discipline of which the conservative cultural elite were dreaming. Abstinence was widely practiced in these associations, not only in relation to alcohol, but especially in relation to the unsettled youth (YMCA) and their supposed sexual promiscuity (The White Cross) (Fleisch, 1903). These associations were both modern and traditional in the sense that the conservative revivalist cultural elite envisioned combined voluntarism, discipline, and paternalism, where individuals would publicly pledge abstinence in front of their peers under the guidance of a pastor or educated "ascetic" who would similarly sign the pledge in solidarity. The pledge was a way of publicly committing to not sinning anymore, and the problem of "sliding back" into sin was handled with techniques of probation and quarantines (see Granum-Jensen, 1979).

Summing up, the three clusters of the moral elite of the temperance movement can be characterized as organic, traditional, and revivalist, respectively.

The organic elite emerged with the economic relations of the nineteenth century: farmers and workers were gaining increasing economic and political power, and their view on the temperance question grew "organically" (Gramsci, 1989, pp. 113–116) as an interpretation of their new position. The moral elite that represented these groups couched the question in the vocabulary of the Enlightenment tradition: temperance was a matter of direct democracy and understanding how alcohol affected body and mind.

Conversely, to the traditional section of the moral elite, temperance was part of a philanthropic strategy that was based on Christian compassion and grew out of their

traditional roles as managers of the moral order and shepherds of their congregation and patients in the village (Mannheim, 1940 [1923]). This is clear from the many philanthropic associations to which they are linked. Temperance was not so much a movement as a way of adapting and expanding the traditional in a capitalist and urbanized society.

The revivalist moral elite similarly aimed to alleviate a philanthropic burden. Theologians and educated laymen in Copenhagen were confronted with the new poverty and social destitution and did not fnd that the traditional institutions were up to the task. Instead, they saw temperance as part of a radical civil society strategy intended to "re-Christianize' Danish society.

## **The Moral Elite's Belief Frame: Disease and Values**

At the turn of the century, medical science would provide a new way of understanding the causes of alcoholism. This new disease frame contributed to removing stigma from alcoholics, since alcoholism was no longer (solely) considered an individual faw but rather an infiction that could befall anyone. It would, however, also open a door for "illiberal" and eugenic measures in the treatment of alcoholics (commitment to treatment by force and forced sterilization—the latter not known to have been exercised on the indication of alcoholism, even if the law allowed for it) (Sevelsted, 2019).

This was obviously a strong argument in the battle for prohibition and other means of combatting alcoholism. The message, however, resonated differently with the different parts of the movement, and the moral elites became instrumental in aligning the disease frame with the ideological and religious frames of the various factions.

The disease frame was introduced most forcefully by the government-appointed sobriety and alcohol commissions in 1903, 1914, 1934, and 1947. While the later commissions were mainly mandated to investigate how consumption of alcohol could be brought down through regulations, the sobriety commission of 1903 also made recommendations on the care of alcoholics (Sobriety Commission report, 1907). The commission was dominated by people from the temperance movement (Eriksen, 2007, 61). The report published in 1907 marked a change in the view of alcoholics. It stated that alcoholism could no longer be viewed as a "moral aberration," but as a disease of the central nervous system.

The main author of the fnal report, medical doctor Christian Geill (Fig. 10.8), was part of the *traditional* temperance elite: a member of the Society for the Promotion of Sobriety, he had similar experiences with the target group as Dalhoff. He had been a physician at a mental hospital and manager of a prison. He would later become chairman of the medicolegal council that served in an advisory capacity for the eugenic-inspired marriage laws of 1922 (Koch, 2014). Like Dalhoff, he saw a close connection between alcoholism, insanity, and crime.

**Fig. 10.8** Christian Geill's EGO network

Geill had denounced the crude Lombrosian theories of criminality as a hereditary trait but did suggest "degenerative" causes for alcoholism and its infuence on crime (Geill, 1906), even if he later on proved skeptical toward the effects of sterilization on sexuality (Koch, 2000, 43f). In the 1907 report, he suggested that the state build treatment facilities for alcoholics, overseen by doctors working according to rational medical principles (Sobriety Commission report, 1907, 148–55). While no state facility was established at this time, the report did result in increased support for private facilities and the legitimacy of the view that alcoholism was an illness – as well as the success of the principle of state intervention when others (family in particular) were affected.

The disease frame resonated well with the traditional elite who, from their vantage point, could see the perceived close connection between alcoholism, crime, mental illness, "degeneration," and other social ills. Belief frame (disease) and value frame (tradition) ft nicely with the preferred *Anstalt* strategy of this elite – a strategy of patronage that would give rise to and operate in specialized institutions.

The *organic* elite of the social-liberal camp around *Danmarks Afholdsforening* would also subscribe to the widely accepted theory of degeneration. Trier referred to the degenerative effects of alcohol on the generations to come (Trier, 1902b, p. 552). He further stated that "(…) the laws of degeneration leave the children [of the drunk] with weaker bodies and less power of resistance towards the challenges of life than other children" (Trier, 1892, p. 361). As already mentioned above, this did not lead him to promote legal incapacitation as a means to combat alcoholism. Enlightenment was the preferred method.

An infuential voice, but nonetheless an outlier, should be mentioned: Carl Ottosen (Fig. 10.9) who combines aspects of organic and cultural elite features. He grew up in Hjørring, in the heart of the stronghold of the largely secular Danish Abstinence Association. Initially, he sought a "good rural" profession—veterinarian—but eventually decided to become a medical doctor. He was then "awakened" as while studying under the Seventh-day Adventist J.H. Kellogg at The Battle Creek Sanatorium, Michigan. As a Seventh-day Adventist, Ottosen was a vegetarian, and

**Fig. 10.9** Ottosen's EGO network

he became the driving force behind the building of several sanatoriums in Denmark. Ottosen would go on to become chairman of The Danish Abstinence Association.

The Seventh-day Adventist church belongs to the branch of Reformed (Calvinist) Protestantism where Holiness ideas fourish, which in many cases has led to a belief in the healing powers of faith. The more radical believed in the power of faith and the Holy Spirit to cure diseases; this intuition was also present in the less radical forms, such as faith's ability to heal social illnesses and individual sinful habits (Olesen, 1996, pp. 221–224; 243–252). Judging from his writings, Ottosen does not seem to have been especially radical in this respect. Maybe this was why he did not choose Blue Cross—or maybe because religious "leftists" were excluded from holding leadership positions in Blue Cross. His popular book *The Road to Health* (*Vejen til Sundhed*) also mentions the theory of degeneration as one of the regrettable effects on children and society (Ottosen, 1909, p. 265), but as the leading physician at a sanatorium and a key fgure in the sanatorium movement, he focuses on the harmful effects of alcoholism on the metabolism and nervous system. The disease frame here becomes part of an *avant la lettre* "new age" frame that emphasizes (with reference to American Pragmatist William James, among others) the close connection between body and mind. Alcohol and coffee should be avoided as stimulants because they affect the metabolism and nervous system negatively, while baths are stimulants that contribute positively to a healthy life. Through suggestion, the mind is able to infuence the body—provoke vomiting and pain relief through placebo, just as facial blushing could be caused by emotional as well as physical stimulation (Ottosen, 1909, pp. 14–17).

Overall, the disease frame was integrated into the organic elite's Enlightenment values: popular rule, rule by law, and education were the preferred means of combatting alcohol consumption.

The disease frame resonated in other ways with the revivalist elite, namely, through the Holiness teachings, but also through the method of fnding analogies between Biblical passages and the new heredity science. Harald Westergaard (1853–1936) (Fig. 10.10), renowned political economist and co-founder of Danish Blue Cross, argued that "it is surely a sign of the times when even national economists who are far removed from Christianity wish for a return of the times when belief in God was alive in the population and along with it resistance to disease and suffering (…)" (Westergaard, 1885, p. 15). As mentioned, the Swiss founder of the international Blue Cross believed that faith had cured his physical impairment.

Not only magical but also analogical thinking aligned conservative revivalism and science. While the conservative cultural elite that dominated the organization was generally skeptical of the role of science in religious and moral matters—and especially opposed the new liberal theology—they did fnd a way to reconcile faith and science in this matter. On the one hand, they continued to claim that science and faith each had their separate domain and that one could not be applied to the other. On the other hand, they argued that science in this case only confrmed what the Bible had said all along. Theories of degeneration were interpreted as an elaboration of principles already known through the Bible—a general strategy that Protestants applied to accommodate scientifc evidence to biblical teachings (Møller, 2000).

Westergaard, in a small pamphlet in which he publicly declares his faith, explicitly dealt with the issue of how scientifc and religious insights could co-exist. Commenting on Darwin's theory, he mentions how heredity makes itself felt everywhere in human life and creates the foundation for the modern science of sociology. However, what Darwin's theory takes away (from a moral-Christian view of society) with one hand, it returns with the other: a Christian should never expect science to prove his (sic) faith. All one can expect from science are small indices of agreement—and these can indeed be found: "It follows from the central tenets of Darwinism that the sins of the fathers through heredity are visited on the children" (Westergaard, 1885, p. 13f). Blue Cross would follow the same line of reasoning in many of their publications: one article in the members' magazine argued that God had put the law of heredity into human existence, and that this was actually a confrmation of Exodus 20:5: "punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation" (Blue Cross, 1913). God had put the hereditary laws into nature so that misfortune would not spread (H.P. Aarestrup, 1915). This was a view that was shared and propagated by the revivalist moral elite.

**Fig. 10.10** Harald Westergaard's EGO network

Like the other parts of the moral elite, the revivalist elite accepted the disease frame and integrated it into their value frames. Bible and science supported each other—even if the exact status of the relationship varied. This only strengthened the belief that a religious awakening of the population was the best means to achieve resilience (to use an anachronistic expression) to alcoholism and other social ills.

## **Conclusion**

In this chapter, I have shown how three distinct moral elites were crucial in articulating interpretive frames for the Danish temperance movement at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. By integrating insights from elite studies and the distinction of the framing approach between values and beliefs, I used SNA as well as interpretive methods to distinguish three clusters within the movement: a *traditional*, an *organic*, and a *revivalist* moral elite. While they all supported the temperance cause, they did so by articulating and integrating values and causal beliefs in distinct ways. The disease frame was common to all clusters. Alcoholism was believed to be a disease and have degenerative effects on generations to come, just as it was linked to other individual and social illnesses: criminality, mental illness, epilepsy, and more. Each elite cluster managed to integrate these beliefs in their respective value frames: traditional conservatism, revivalist conservatism, and Enlightenment.

While the diagnosis was thus the same, the cure varied according to beliefs: either the established moral elites should act on their faith and serve their local and national communities through treatment facilities or a theocratic civil society should emerge that would foster direct involvement of pastors, laymen, and members to enforce religious discipline and thus solve the alcohol question—or Enlightenment would prevail, and the value frames of education, direct democracy, or obedience to the laws of health would solve the problem. Each elite cluster in this way sought to amplify their values and integrate their disease belief into these values.

In the end, the temperance movement all but vanished from Danish soil. This may very well be partially explained by elite strategies. In Sweden, the temperance elite managed to make their message resonate with the ideological project that would come to dominate the twentieth century there: social democracy. In Denmark, the temperance movement never gained a frm footing within the ruling political elites. It never came to be viewed as "progressive" in the same way as in Sweden.

In 1917, a heavy tax increase on distilled spirits was enacted in Denmark, and from this point on (if not before), the movement began its steady decline. While it was successful in "drying out" some local parishes, it never managed to gather political support for a national referendum or enact a prohibition law—not to mention a transformation of society through associational Christianity. The sole successful strategy proved to be the *Anstalt* strategy (the treatment facility strategy) that could be integrated into the emerging welfare state. Blue Cross soon abandoned the civil society strategy of their founders and pursued a treatment strategy instead—a

strategy shift that would secure their survival as effectively the sole temperance organization left in Denmark. This is a survival that has left the organization as a service provider, but still with a position from which their leaders can articulate the temperance message. In the Danish Who's Who, only two individuals with ties to the temperance movement are represented from 2000 to 2018—both with ties to Blue Cross.

Unbeknownst to the temperance actors at the time, the long-term political "coloring" of the movement would—in part—depend on how the various moral elite clusters were able to integrate the new disease frame into their value frames. Here, the combined conservative bloc proved more successful from a purely survivalist point of view—even if it meant giving up on the radical civil society strategy envisioned by the Blue Cross founders.

## **Implications for the Study of Social Movements**

For social movement scholars, the case study of the moral elite of the Danish temperance movement provides new paths for pursuing a research agenda that reveals how moral elites promote certain value and belief frames in social movements. Just as the feld of social movement research may unwittingly have developed a blind spot regarding the role of morality in movements, so the role of movement elites in developing, amplifying, extending, etc. interpretive frames has been underappreciated. While concepts such as brokers, leaders, or entrepreneurs capture important aspects of movements and mobilization, they do not capture the fact that social movements also accumulate resources at the top of their organization, whether these be in the form of economic wealth, status, or the symbolic means to prioritize and synthesize ideological frames. Elites may also engage in movements with an eye to gaining such resources or propagating certain interpretive frames. Movement frames do not emerge from nothing; they are cultivated and spread by specifc individuals. As Sophia Wathne shows in Chap. 7 of this book, such frames may emerge from the grassroots of a movement, and scholars should be mindful not to superimpose their own interpretations on activists. The study of moral elites in social movements may very well be considered the other side of the same coin: holding movement elites accountable for not deviating too far from the value frames of their members, adherents, and constituents. This is, I believe, an intention that is similar to what Sara Kalm and Anna Meeuwisse undertake in Chap. 12. While I have studied a movement that has left only modest traces in a small corner of the world, the agenda of holding movement elites accountable is valid everywhere.

10 Moral Elites in the Danish Temperance Movement (1910–1919): Elite Struggles…

## **References**


Tarrow, S. (2005). *The new transnational activism*. Cambridge University Press.


Weber, M. (1988). *Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie*. J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Part IV Culture and Tradition**

# **Chapter 11 The Dark Side of Laughter: Humour as a Tool for Othering in the Memes of Czech Far-Right Organization**  *Angry Mothers*

**Eva Svatoňová**

**Abstract** Far-right grassroot organizations were early adopters of the internet and social media and have been using it to spread their ideologies, mobilize people and network since the 1990s. With the increased usage of social media, their communication style has naturally changed. Due to the interactive nature of social media, the far-right groups started to communicate in a savvy style based on meme and DIY aesthetics. This style allows these groups to blurry the line between serious and irony (Shifman, L., *Memes in Digital Culture*. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2014) but also between facts and misinformation (Klein, O., The Open Journal of Sociopolitical Studies 154–179, 2020). There is a burgeoning body of literature investigating the way and for what purposes such organizations use the internet in which the researchers look particularly on memes (Klein, O., The Open Journal of Sociopolitical Studies 154–179, 2020) but also humour (Billig, M., Comic racism and violence. In S. Lockyer, & M. Pickering (Eds.), Beyond a joke. The limits of humor (pp. 25–44). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005a; Billig, M., Laughter and ridicule. Towards a social critique of humor. London: SAGE Publications, 2005b). However, not many studies explored the link between humour and morality. The aim of this exploratory study, in which humour is viewed as a means of claims making and negotiation of political views, is to deepen the knowledge of how humour in memes produced and reproduced by far-right organizations can serve as a tool for constructing a moral order. To do so, I analysed memes used on the far-right Facebook page run by Czech organization *Angry Mothers* which engage in anti-Islam and anti-gender activism. Based on Michael Billig's (2005) distinction between rebellious and disciplinary humour, I argue that the organization used rebellious humour to present themselves as an alternative to mainstream media and resistance to the alleged dictatorship of liberal elites and disciplinary humour to put minorities (both sexual and ethnic) "in their place".

E. Svatoňová (\*)

Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark e-mail: sva.eva@cas.au.dk

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2023

A. Sevelsted, J. Toubøl (eds.), *The Power of Morality in Movements*, Nonproft and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98798-5\_11

#### **Keywords** Far right · Humour · Social media · Memes · Discourse

## **Introduction**

"So, members of Ku-Klux-Klan have a sense of humour", remarked Polish journalist Katarzyna Surmiak-Domańska, expressing her surprise when attending a Ku Klux Klan gathering and noticing her respondents' merchandise decorated with the tongue-in-cheek *We Dream of White Christmas*.

Her surprise demonstrates the fact that far-right groups and their activities are usually deemed as being humourless and associated with darkness, aggressivity, hatred and violence. On the other hand, humour is often considered to be something fundamentally positive and perceived as a desirable quality in people. The reality, however, can be quite the opposite. While the far-right's communication undoubtedly consists of all the negativity listed above, their communication can often be humorous, witty and playful. Indeed, right-wing propaganda frequently includes material that is jokey in its intent (Billig, 2005a, 2005b). In fact, the data used for the analysis in this contribution was originally gathered in order to examine the way Czech anti-feminist, far-right groups used their social media to spread moral panic and construct the members of LGBT+ minority and feminists as folk devils. However, what struck me the most after coding and analysing the collected data was the number of jokes, irony and satire present on the analysed Facebook pages. It turned out that humour was an essential discursive strategy present in the communication of the studied group (by far the most frequently used reaction to the posts of the group was "haha"), and it was used for more than merely entertaining the page's followers. Humour was also being used to frame a minority group of people as a threat to moral values of the majority within the society.

The nature of the internet and the way people use it undoubtebly affected the style of the communication of the studied organization. It is a well-known fact that far-right groups were early adaptors of the internet using various forums to disseminate their ideology as early as the mid-1990s (Muis et al., 2021). Since then, the internet has served these groups as a public space for debating, exchanging positions, showing support to each other and networking (Caiani & Wagemann, 2009). In the beginning, such actors predominantly operated in the shadows of their own websites and discussion forums and mostly reached the people who deliberately looked them up, in other words, the people who were already agreeing with their ideology and political views or were at the very least interested in knowing more about it. However, around 2010, using forums such as 4chan and 8chan and social media such as Facebook, far-right activists managed to reach a mainstream audience, and their posts became much more widely viewed and disseminated (Nagle, 2017).

This achievement can be explained by the change in their communication style, as a broader audience would be out of reach if the groups kept posting only ideological manifestos and pictures of swastikas (Nagle, 2017). Instead, grassroots organizations and activists (not only the far-right oriented) started to communicate in a savvy style based on meme and DIY aesthetics. This style allows these groups to blur the line between seriousness and irony (Shifman, 2014) but also between facts and misinformation (Klein, 2020). Although on social media memes and funny visuals are often dismissed as shallow entertainment, their affordance allows their users to participate in a public sphere and negotiate their political and moral views and identities (Shifman, 2014). After all, the US election campaign 2016, during which Donald Trump's supporters used memetic aesthetics to infltrate sites from The Donald subreddit to mainstream internet culture, proved that the memes of the new online right-wing movement should be taken seriously (Nagle, 2017). Accordingly, I understand humour as a means of claim making that can serve as a tool for negotiating moral values in the society by putting people with "undesirable behaviour" into their place.

In this exploratory study, I scrutinize how the far-right activists use humour to negotiate morally desirable and undesirable identities online. To do so, I scraped two Facebook pages run by a Czech far-right group known by the moniker *Angry Mothers*. While we already have some knowledge about the usage of memes by farright groups in the US and Western European contexts, they remained rather overlooked in the context of Central and Eastern Europe. In said areas, the memes are partly infuenced by the Western branches of far right but also draws on local contexts, historical settings and collective memory of the region. As Billig (2005a, 2005b) correctly points out, humour manifests differently in different times and places, and different groups may deem something funny or unfunny. The production and reception of humour are essentially dependent on not only on the producer of the joke and the audience but also on the specifc culture and social group to which they belong. Therefore, the contribution of this study lies in providing a deeper understanding of the usage of humour as a communication tool of far-right actors in Czechia. To analyse the material, I draw on the theory of rebellious and disciplinary humour (Billig, 2005a, 2005b) and the theory of moral boundaries (Lamont, 1992), i.e. symbolic lines that people draw to make distinctions between people with whom they identify and between people with whom they do not want to be associated. In other words, between "people like us" and social categories, they perceive as violating moral norms (Lamont, 2000). Lamont (2000) argues that studying moral boundaries of individuals allows us to reconstruct how, for instance, workers come to adopt racist positions (p. 5). While partially agreeing with this statement, I argue that the racist position does not arise only from the cultural and material worlds the workers inhabit, but it is a two-way street: the supply side provides the supporters with ideological content which often precedes the formation of opinions by the demand side. Therefore, it is important to study the ways in which the supply side serves its ideological content to its supporters.

I will start this article by briefy introducing the group that is in the focus of this study and continue by discussing the role of humour in social movements. Afterwards, I will discuss the relationship between humour and morality. Later, I present the methods I used to collect and analyse my data. I fnish with the presentation of my fndings.

## **Angry Mothers**

On its website, the group presents itself as a group of middle-aged, conservative women who are dissatisfed with the liberally oriented development of Czech society and do not feel represented by the political elite. While some members of the group have been active on the internet since 2009, the group gained visibility mostly due to their emergence in the Anti-Islam protests in 2015 during which they discursively exploited their motherhood and women's identity to oppose the acceptance of refugees in Czechia in the name of women's rights. However, later they stated that the group consists of politically aware citizens—both men and women—and the usage of the word *mothers* in their name has a symbolic value referring to parental instincts and traditional values. In doing so, the group capitalizes on the members' supposed women sex identity to portray themselves as morally superior since women are often portrayed as morally pure individuals. These associations are derived from the value placed on caring and nurturance, the importance of mother's love and the overriding value of peace (Tronto, 1993). Accordingly, *Angry Mothers*' chairperson Eva Hrindová claimed in one of her speeches: "we, women, are more sensitive to injustice" (Svatoňová, 2020). When I interviewed her in October 2018, she admitted: "despite the fact that both, men and women, can become members of the organization, we chose the name Angry Mothers to symbolize the powerful energy a mother can develop when she is worried about her children and wants to protect them".

According to its website, the organization has approximately 5200 members and was offcially registered in February 2016. However, during the interview, the chairperson of the group claimed that the core of the group consists of approximately 20 active members. The group engages in a diverse range of activities which includes publishing books, sending letters to politicians and organizing public events, but the organization's main activity is running websites and social media pages.

While they became visible through their activity in the Czech anti-Jihad movement, their agenda consists of a wide range of issues. Among them are some rather obvious themes such as opposing sexual education in elementary schools, opposing LGBT+ rights, supporting white supremacism and promoting heteronormative order in Czech society, but they also promote alternative medicine and support the right to give birth at home. Their Facebook page *Angry Mothers* which was founded in 2016 and followed by more than 45,000 people (making it one of the most followed far-right pages in the Czech context) was shut down by Facebook authorities in August 2018 due to the spread of hatred and misinformation. Two months later, in October 2018, the same group started running another Facebook page with a new name—*Antifeminist Strike*. During the few months of its existence, it managed to gather more than 10,000 followers. However, it was offcially shut down by Facebook authorities in March 2019. While the group became known as opponents to Islam and immigration, their later activities rather focused on opposition to women's rights and LGBT+ rights that they united under the label "gender ideology". By focusing on this theme, the group joined the global trend known under the label "anti-gender campaigns" that engage in spreading a conspiracy theory about a dangerous "gender ideology", the aim of which is to diminish all differences between men and women and genocide of white people (Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017).

There are three types of activists involved in the anti-gender campaigning in Czechia, and each group uses different styles of rhetoric. The frst group consists of offcial representatives of the Catholic Church and those activists that are directly associated with the Church and, thus, frame their arguments in religious terms. The second group are activists, who avoid being associated with the Church and pay particular attention to present their arguments as based on sound scientifc research and economic theories. The last group, to which *Angry Mothers* belong, consists of activists that have direct links to far-right and anti-Islam organizations, both political parties and social movements. These activists use populist strategies and target mostly working-class people while opposing "corrupted elites, media and cosmopolitan liberals" (Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017). This particular group has no justifcation for religious arguments in Czechia, where most of the population identify as atheists, neither they can support their arguments through scientifc evidence as they use a low, "closer to people" discursive style. Therefore, these groups, active mainly on social media, draw on language of morality and use a communication style reminiscent of tabloid media, using powerful images accompanied with short, emotionally coloured comments and exclamation marks. However, as the analytical section of this article shows, besides angry emotions, they often attempt to trigger positive emotions in their followers and high among them is laughter.

## **Humour as the Weapon of the Powerless**

Social movements are defned as a collective effort to make or prevent a change in society (Della Porta & Diani, 2006). Therefore, social movements, by their defnition, express dissatisfaction with the way things are and aim to establish the legitimacy of a specifc claim about a social condition and to then put that interpretation of reality into action (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 2009). They do so by using various strategies.

Since social movements are "outsiders" in the mainstream political process (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 2009), these actors suffer from a lack of direct access to lawmakers as well as to media gatekeepers. To affect lawmakers or at least change the mindset and values of populations, they need to choose some other ways of reaching their audience. With this goal in mind, they often frame their claims as a question of morality (Snow & Benford, 2000). Thus, they often draw on moral shocks (Jasper & Poulsen, 1995) or moral panics (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 2009) by which they try to affect the moral judgement of the people who they could potentially mobilize into action. While these rhetorical techniques have already attracted some scholarly attention, the usage of humour as a means of changing the public mindset is rather an under researched area (Hart, 2007) despite the fact that witty and humorous slogans, banners and merchandise, as well as playful performances, have always been somewhat present in protests (Kuipers, 2008; Hart, 2007).

In sociology, humour as a means of political protest was frst taken into account by Obdrlik (1942) who described the Czech jokes about Germans as gallows humour and political resistance during the period when Czechoslovakia was occupied by Nazi Germany. Later, in the early 1980s, humour became a matter of study in the history of protests. Most of the historians who studied social movements drew on the theory of Michail Bakhtin (1984) and the carnival festivals during which political protests were possible as long as they were done by joking. Such carnivals, however, got out of hand sometimes and ended up in outright rebellious movements (Hart, 2007). Charles Tilly (1986) further showed how the practice of charivari, a form of ritual manifestation related to carnivals, turned into a direct political protest against the local authorities in the seventeenth century in Dijon (p. 32–33).

Later, scholars mostly studied humour as the weapon of the weak. Christie Davies (2007), similarly to Obdrlik (1942), showed how oppressed people used jokes in precarious situations, in this case people living under the dictatorial regime of the Soviet Union. She described such jokes as the "jokes of the powerless against the absolutely powerful" (p. 291). Additionally, Thomas Olesen (2007) argued that humour can function to bridge a distance. He claims that "humour as a symbol in framing across distance can be powerful because it often evokes human frailties and imperfections that are universally recognizable" because when "a communicator uses humour in that way he opens himself to the recipient of his message by implicitly saying: 'I am only human just like you'" (p. 25). Nghiem Lien Huong (2007) showed how the collective nature of humour in the workplace can foster the perception of community in the social movement of the working class. Krista Cowman (2007) demonstrated that while manifestation of feminized politics performed by suffragettes became the butt of contemporary jokes among an uncomprehending public, suffragettes also used humour as a deliberate tactic, to diffuse hostility, to gain suffragettes a hearing or to emphasize the ridiculous aspects of their opponents (Cowman, 2007). Harry H. Hiller (1983) demonstrated that humour is an important means of communication intimately related to confict in social movements. Finally, Rachel V. Kutz-Flamenbaum (2014) discussed how humour can be used as a communicative and emotional strategy for social movement activists and organizations. She distinguished between humour directed outside the group in the forms of tactics and frames and the humour that was used inside movement in regards to leadership, collective identity and emotional labour. Knight (2015) showed how ironic humour was used in slogans as a reaction to neoliberal measures in Greece and how it questioned the relationship between wealth and democracy and reframed the political debate.

All these mentioned studies focused on humorous protest performances of people with whom the researchers rather sympathized and described humour as a form of resistance: a boost for the oppressed and the means to undermine their oppressor. However, humour is also used by the social movements whose ideological views are less favourable. There are a few studies examining the humour within the discourses of far-right grassroots organizations. For instance, Michael Billig (2005a, 2005b) looked into websites of Ku Klux Klan supporters and classifed their violent racist jokes into categories and highlighted the blatantly cruel and bigoted aspects of racist jokes. In his earlier study of three extreme right websites, Billig (2001) showed that the organizations use a meta-discourse that allows them to justify their content as "just jokes," arguing that the extreme language of racist hatred is a matter of enjoyment, as the websites he studied portrayed the imagining of extreme violence as a matter of humour. The body of the literature on far right and humour is further burgeoning due to the fact that far-right organizations thrive especially in the online environment that require a witty communication style. As Nagle (2017) showed, certain online platforms allow the alt right to use the meme-based, DYI aesthetics that help them to cover their ideology in a jokey way and reach wider audiences than only like-minded groups of followers.

Following these scholars, I argue that humour in the communication of social movements should be taken into serious consideration, because, as Tanja Petrović (2018) puts it "the ambiguity of political parody, its refexivity, and its capacity to build or reconfgure affective communities are workings of political humor that enable individuals to embrace their own involvement and vulnerability and the ambiguous and unpredictable moral consequences of their complex positioning as an authentic and potentially productive form of engaging with political reality" (p. 201). It is no coincidence that comedians such as Beppe Grillo or Jimmy Morales have managed to make a career in politics and that there is massive consumption of parodic media content which citizens often treat as a more accurate source of information than mainstream, corporate media (Petrović, 2018, p. 202). In short, there is an intimate relationship between humour and politics. Not only has humour remerged as an innovative political tool (Klumbytė, 2014), it also became politics itself, performatively inhabiting the very practice of politics (Petrović, 2018). As Kuipers (2008) rightly argued, political humour becomes part of the political landscape since it highlights social rights and disagreements and can sometimes spill over into serious political discourse (p. 371).

To summarize, I understand humour and jokes as a discursive tool that allows social actors to engage with their target audience and fuel emotional responses to political issues through a repetition of specifc themes, framings and extremist ideologies, under the guise of entertainment.

## **Humour and Moral Boundaries**

I believe that the existing research studying the transnational anti-gender discourse overlooks the importance of the specifc socioeconomic background of the audience to which the humorous discursive style is supposed to appeal. Based on the data analysis, I argue that the Catholic anti-gender campaigners draw mostly on religious arguments; conservative, neoliberal anti-gender campaigners target their middle-class audiences with scientifc and economic arguments; groups such *Angry Mothers* use the low political style based on humiliation, ridicule, powerful images and tabloid style news to appeal to less educated, working-class people (Ostiguy, 2017). Previous research pointed out that workers put more emphasis on moral criteria than their upper middle-class counterparts (Lamont, 2000). Therefore, it is not surprising that the humour of such organizations often draws on moral boundaries which serve as a means to separate people into groups and generate feelings of similarity and group membership among the followers of the page (Lamont, 2000; Lamont, 1992). Such moral boundaries often work to provide people with a space in which they can affrm their worth and preserve their dignity, a space in which they can express their own identity and competence (Lamont, 2000, p. 4).

As I demonstrate in the analytical section, morality and dignity lie in the centre of the perception of social hierarchies constructed by the discourse of *Angry Mothers*. Their populist distinction between "us", morally pure Czech people, and "them", corrupted elites and immoral minorities, was integral to all jokes they made. The link between morality and humour is hardly surprising. Morality of humour and laughter has been a subject of a scholastic debate since Ancient Greece. The question was mostly whether it was moral or not to laugh at jokes that made fun of someone else's misfortune. For instance, Socrates claimed that since people are laughing at the false conceits of their friends, they were taking pleasure in evil (Billig, 2005a, 2005b, p. 40), and both Freud and Bergson highlighted the cruelty and aggression in humour (Ibid). On the other hand, humour can also serve as a tool to express what is morally right or wrong and symbolically put people to "their place".

In this article, I draw on the theory of humour that was developed by Michael Billig in his book *Laughter and Ridicule* as he pays particular attention to the moral aspects of humour. Billig (2005a, 2005b) distinguishes between two types of humour, or rather ridicule. His classifcation is based on who is ridiculing whom and from which position. He calls the frst type "disciplinary humour" which he defnes as humour that "mocks those who break social rules, and thus can be seen to aid the maintenance of those rules" (p. 202). In this case, ridicule functions as disciplinary tool creating a morally good society.

He calls the second type of humour "rebellious" and defnes it as the humour which "mocks the social rules, and, in its turn, can be seen to challenge, or rebel against, the rules" (p. 202). While the former is used by superiors to maintain their power, the latter is used by subordinates to challenge the authority. The disciplinary humour contains an intrinsic conservatism, whereas the rebellious humour is associated with radicalism (Billig, 2005a, 2005b, p. 202). Billig's (2005a, 2005b) distinction proves particularly useful while analysing the communication of a far-right grassroots organization. On one hand, as representatives of the "normal majority" (as they call themselves), they use humour to discipline people such as sexual and ethnic minorities who deviate from the heteronormative lifestyle desirable within the system of the nationalist ideology. On the other hand, they are a grassroots organization that is trying to turn people against the offcial political system and democracy and present themselves as the real resistance in the time of a new liberal dictatorship. They do so by using the rebellious humour mocking the representatives of the political system.

## **Data and Methods**

The aim of the article is to identify which social categories the organization perceives as violating moral norms and what moral standards the group uses to evaluate other people. In other words, I explore how the far-right organization concretely defnes "us" and "them" and draws the lines between the worthy and the less worthy. To understand what themes and categories emerged among the jokes and memes published on the studied Facebook pages, I frst used the application Netvizz to scrape the pages and gather all visuals that were published during the period of 12 months, starting in February 2018, when I began conducting the research, and ending in February 2019. In October 2018, I conducted an interview with the chairperson of the organization who gave me a permission to use the material published on their social media. In total, I worked with 400 images. The database consisted of both images reposted from other websites and images that were made by the members of the organization themselves.

After I created the corpus of images, I used inductive coding to detect patterns and regularities among the visuals. I went through the images several times and categorized them into clusters—I was particularly interested in who was the butt of the joke and what means were used to make fun of them. Since the meaning of the joke was very often conveyed through an interplay of words and images, I was interested in the interaction of these two dimensions of the jokes. Informed by Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Wodak & Meyer, 2016), I focused on the underlying messages behind the jokes, specifcally their moral dimension. Through the analysis, I attempted to interpret the images in the context of far-right discourse that was informed by academic literature on far right as well as by a long-term ethnographic observation of the Facebook group. I decided to present three posts for each identifed theme. The aim of the analysis is, however, not to claim a strict sense of representativity. Instead, my analysis is mainly descriptive and exploratory, and I attempt to present an illustrative example.

## **Those Who Laugh Together, Belong Together**

#### "Us, the victims of the system"

The humour used by the organization was based on the populist division "us" against "them". When portraying the "us", the admins used light-hearted jokes that made fun of the shared joys and sorrows of everyday life of the working class people. In such jokes, the admins deliberately put themselves and their followers into a rebellious position. They ridiculed the system in which they were helpless citizens with no power. Such jokes were thematically centred around the lifestyle and misery of the low-income class and wittily portrayed the inequality from the point of view of those who struggle. Such jokes seemed to serve as the symbolic glue for the people who followed the page as they could laugh about the very issues they had to deal with in their everyday lives. These jokes were political; however, they were not based on humiliation and ridicule, but they played on stereotypes that were supposed to criticize and highlight the incongruities in the society. They mainly pointed out that Czech people are being robbed of basic resources such as water, that public services do not work, that the public institutions such as post offces do not function and that the Czech government is not able to maintain the roads effectively enough for safe driving. While such jokes can seem innocent at frst, and might seem not to explicitly represent the far-right ideology, they are very serious claims about the dissatisfaction with state affairs. Through such jokes, the group shaped their identity as "we", the people who struggle and are left behind by our elites.

These jokes were further fed by the Czech collective memory. In post-communist countries, such jokes have a long tradition. Under the communist rule, they served as a critique of the political system—"since the state controlled the economy and claimed responsibility for the welfare of its citizens and repeatedly told them how well off they were" (Davies, 2007, p. 297) despite the fact that the housing and working conditions were not satisfactory and the collectivized agriculture could not provide enough food. With such jokes, the group emphasize how out-of-touch Czech politicians are with the needs and everyday life of ordinary citizens and portray themselves as vulnerable citizens punching up (Figs. 11.1, 11.2, 11.3).

#### "The Corrupted Elites"

In contrast to their own position which was defned as the underdog, the group often drew boundaries against politicians and people working in the media that were judged as lacking personal integrity and sincerity. While these people achieved a high socioeconomic status, they were portrayed as lacking moral worth. This is because in the workers' understanding of the world, work signals a form of moral purity and is often mobilized to draw boundaries between decent people and the others (Lamont, 2000, p. 24). The liberal elites were often portrayed as lazy and untrustworthy but also as manipulative and actively using their resources, such as access to media gatekeepers, to brainwash the ordinary citizens (Figs. 11.4, 11.5, 11.6).

#### "The Silenced Majority"

In contrast to these elites, the admins of the Facebook page positioned themselves as the "resistance" to the "liberal dictatorship". Through this kind of humour, they portrayed the current political regime in Czechia, and more generally in the European Union and Western democracies, as the "Absurdistan" in which "normal people" still retaining "common sense" were "victims" of the political abuse. As Kuhar and Paternotte (2017) rightly observed, members of the anti-gender movement tend to present themselves as "the heirs of Ghandi or Socrates", that is, as the "members of a movement of resistance" (p. 1). They do so by blaming elites, technocrats, gender scholars and feminist activists and international and supranational powers, often reduced to the metonymy "Brussels", for imposing perversions on powerless peoples. Obdrlik (1942) showed that Czechs in Czechia occupied by Nazi regime used humour as a symbol of resistance, joking in order to bolster

**Fig. 11.1** "Next week, we will install radar measuring the pace"

morale and hope for the oppressed, making the fear and the tragedy of the moment seem only temporary (Martineau, 1972). However, the group analysed in this article used humour to construct an impression of living in a situation similar to the World War II regime and presented itself as the "resistance of modern times", the "voice of the helpless people" and the alternative to the mainstream media, portrayed in the memes as "brainwashing machinery". They strategically used irony to highlight that in the "dictatorship of multiculturalism and gender ideology", it is enough to be white or heterosexual to be labelled as an extremist. With such jokes, the admins can fuel the feelings of injustice. The fact that the group's Facebook pages were shut down several times by Facebook authorities for spreading hatred was further exploited by the organization to strengthen their narrative of being silenced in the era of "liberal totalitarianism" (Figs. 11.7, 11.8, 11.9).

"The Islamized Elites"

Furthermore, the elites were portrayed as immoral and corrupt, not only in the economic realm but also as those who betray their people in the name of unnatural,

**Fig. 11.2** "Keep rowing, man! Water! Don't you want way too much from life?"

multiculturalist ideology. In such jokes, European leaders were portrayed as "overly politically correct", or in other words "subordinate to the demands of the Muslim world". The basis of the humour was highlighting the supposed irony in which Western civilization, proud of its tolerance, seems to be more backwards in regards to women's rights than countries in the East. This manoeuvre was a smart move which helped the racist organization to cover their racist agenda. Instead of ridiculing the minorities themselves, they reframed themselves from their privileged position to the naughty, powerless side. Instead of simply ridiculing the ethnic and religious minorities, they made it seem as though they are rebelling against the demands of political correctness and that they despise the hypocrisy of "western elites" that in the name of political correctness abandon women's rights. While

**Fig. 11.3** "I would tell you a joke about a Czech mailing service… but I am not sure you would get that"

**Fig. 11.4** The sign on the billboard says: "Everybody can go f\*ck themselves" The lady in the picture reacts with a remark: "Finally a politician whom we can trust!"

**Fig. 11.5** The lady from the TV greets the audience with a following sentence: "Today's debate is over. In a moment we will tell you what you should think about it"

criticizing "modern feminism" for creating non-men and non-women, they presented themselves as the last defenders of European women whose safety and freedom were left behind by the immoral, dishonest elites. While the members of the organization portrayed themselves as punching up and criticizing immoral elites, they were ironically also punching down by marginalizing, disrespecting and ridiculing Muslim women (Figs. 11.10, 11.11, 11.12).

"Folk Devils"

Finally, as I demonstrated earlier (Svatoňová, 2021), a lot of the communication of anti-gender campaigners is based on creating moral panic in society. Moral panic is a condition or episode, during which a person or group of persons become viewed as a threat to moral values and interests. Such goal was achieved by using persuasive

**Fig. 11.6** "Pets very often look like their owners" A meme that shows that liberal political elites represented by Hillary Clinton are under control of powerful rich such as George Soros

images of so-called folk devils, the deviants who served as the embodiment of the decadent moral values of contemporary society (Cohen, 1972, 2011, p. 1). The type of jokes targeted and humiliated the enemies who represent the "freaks" threatening the values and structural order in society. In such posts, the admins used disciplinary humour to humiliate sexual and gender minorities whose performance of masculinity and femininity was viewed as perverse. However, the aim of such jokes was not only to make fun of the individuals depicted in the images. Instead, the aim of the memes was to suggest that the entire society is going in a wrong direction, "driven by ideologies" such as feminism due to which traditional femininity and

**Fig. 11.7** "Test—Are you a nazi? Are you white? Yes? Do you hate yourself? No? You are a nazi." In this test, basically everybody who is white and does not suffer of white guilt is portrayed as a nazi

masculinity are dying out. As such, they suggest, we are witnessing the "genocide" of white, Western civilization as with the death of traditional gender roles, the traditional family model dies out as well because people no longer follow what is natural and do not reproduce "as they should". While the members of the sexual minority were the butt of the jokes, they were also presented as victims of the system. These types of jokes, however, revealed that despite the members of the organization identifed with the underdog, they were further reproducing the marginalization of an already marginalized group of people from a position of members of the dominant strata of society (Figs. 11.13, 11.14, 11.15).

**Fig. 11.8** "The group of anonymous heterosexuals. 'Hi, I am Josef and I have a problem. I like women' Soon in the European Union"

# **Concluding Remarks**

Throughout this article, I argued that the group *Angry Mothers* used humour and jokes to promote their ideological views through entertainment. In fact, the organization themselves made it very clear that they use humour in order to communicate their political views. After their second Facebook page reached 5000 followers, the chairperson made a status to thank them:

**Fig. 11.9** "Typical extremists. Son is a boy. Father is a man. Mother is a woman. Daughter is a girl"

"Thank you so much for your interest and we hope that through the occasional laughter we can better understand the absurdity of activism these days. After all, it is not so funny, but it seems that making fun of it helps to spread the word :-) Thank you!"

Based on the fndings of the analysis, I argued that the organization *Angry Mothers* attempted to build an affective community distinguished by the shared moral views through their communication online*.* The aim of the analysis was to identify the moral boundaries between those who laugh and those at whom they laughed. The fndings showed that the group used their Facebook page to present themselves as "the resistance" and an alternative source of information and a "common reason logic" in the time of corrupted liberal media. Moreover, the humorous nature of their communication and political parody provided them with the opportunity to construct a discourse outside of the realm of conventional political speech.

The humour was, in general, used to ridicule the group's opponents and people who were deemed undeserving of a place in Czech society. Those people were either presented as politicians ignoring people and lacking dignity, or minorities lacking traditional moral values. While other researchers (Weaver 2011; Billig, 2005a, 2005b) pointed out that the humour used in the communication of right-wing organizations is based on ridiculing minorities, the fndings of my analysis also showed that the admins often posted jokes that made fun of the "subordinate

**Fig. 11.10** "Can you draw me as one of the French girls?" In this joke, the author makes fun of the "fact" that girls in France that used to be deemed a secularized country are very often covered in hijabs nowadays

position" of the target audience and their demands being not met by the system. In that sense, humour was presented as a coping strategy to deal with something one cannot change: if ywe cannot fght the system, at least we have to laugh at it.

In fact, in the case of the community following the page, it remains a question whether we can talk about the humour as the weapon of the weak. On one hand, it is obvious that the intended audience of these Facebook pages is people living outside of the capital, belonging to the working class, having lower education and income and ultraconservative attitudes. On the other hand, they display the qualities that represent the majority of Czech society, i.e. whiteness, Czech nationality and heteronormative lifestyle. They often identify virtues such as working discipline, dignity and moral purity, as providing them with certain capital that "the others"

**Fig. 11.11** "Abdullah II., the King of Jordan and his family, direct descendants of the prophet Mohamed vs. Swedish ministers from the frst feminist government in the World during their visit in Iran

lack and therefore deserve to be mocked. One could argue that the humour used in the discourse draws on the white privilege of the followers of the page and therefore they use it as a quality which puts them above others.

While far-right organizations and the jokes they publish are often criticized for the lack of moral goodness and therefore described as unfunny, one cannot deny that there was certain appeal to "moral belief systems" of the audience. All the jokes had

**Fig. 11.12** "Future of Western and Eastern Europe (respectively)"

strong moral dimension, dividing the society into groups of "morally pure people" who are the victims of the system, "immoral corrupted elites" and "immoral, pervert deviants" who want to impose their decadent lifestyle on the rest of the society. It is, however, clear that the jokes were not harmless, especially in the case of the jokes that ridiculed sexual and ethnic minorities—their repetition can clearly serve to cement stereotypes in the public mind, and thus perpetuate prejudice and discrimination (Husband, 1988). While racist and misogynist websites often use the strategy of defending themselves by claiming that "they are only joking", *Angry Mothers* used a reverse strategy trying to convince their audience that the "jokes might be funny but ought to be taken seriously" as they depict the real threats and problems.

Finally, it is important to point out that while the jokes posted by *Angry Mothers* were not innocent, they were much less violent and much more moderate than jokes published on other extremist websites such as Ku Klux Klan (Billig, 2005a, 2005b). This fact supports the hypothesis that women's participation in far-right political organizations often helps to soften the "public face" of the far-right extremism as well as helps to make the accusations against feminism and femonationalist

**Fig. 11.13** "The consequences for human body—alcohol, heroine, metamfetamin, feminism"

arguments more legitimate. The fact that the humour used in the posts was less violent than the one Billig (2001, 2005a, 2005b) described in his studies, nonetheless, does not mean the studied Facebook page was less dangerous and did not engage in structural violence. It did consist of posts that were based on misinformation and exaggerated reality in which particularly Muslim men and transgender people were depicted as dangerous, violent individuals and deviants. These messages were not conveyed in a humorous way but rather in the forms of "alternative news that

**Fig. 11.15** "Let's go back. Something has f\*cked up"

offcial media do not publish" mostly reposted from international anti-jihad, white supremacist websites and websites with pro-Russian propaganda and, therefore, not presented in this article.

## **References**

Bakhtin, M. (1984). *Rabelais and his world*. M.I.T. Press.


Billig, M. (2005b). *Laughter and ridicule. Towards a social critique of humor*. SAGE Publications.


Snow, D. A., & Benford, R. D. (2000). Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. *Annual Review of Sociology*, 611–639.

Tilly, C. (1986). *The contentious French.* Harvard University Press.


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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# **Chapter 12 Emotions, Morality, and Political Participation Behaviors in Online Activism**

**Jun Liu**

**Abstract** The chapter analyzes emotional expressions and corresponding moral dimensions in messages posted on the Chinese social media Weibo, and the participation character of public responses online, modeling their emergence and trajectories, and explaining the conditions that are necessary for them to evolve. Through statistical and qualitative interpretative analyses of a sample of observed emotions of Weibo posts over the course of 26 days in the Quangang carbon nine leak incident, as online environmental activism in 2018, we reveal that (1) different emotions exert miscellaneous effects on participation behaviors; (2) the same emotion would have disparate effects on different types of participation behaviors; and (3) the occurrence of moral dimensions especially promoted the generation and expression of activists' emotions, which were magnifed and strengthened through their spread on Weibo. Emotional expressions and their moral dynamics have shaped, but also been shaped by, the nature of the event and specifc sociopolitical context and experience. The implications advance the understudied complexity between emotions, morality, and political participation behaviors in online activism in the authoritarian context.

**Keywords** Online activism · Emotion · Morality · Political participation behaviors · China · Weibo

Often considered as a central dynamic in political movement and activism, emotions—such as anger, fear, pride, and disgust—accompany, condition, and coordinate every stage of movement and activism (e.g., Aminzade & McAdam, 2002, p. 140; Goodwin & Jasper, 2004; Goodwin et al., 2009; Herzog & Golden, 2009; Jasper, 2011, 2018). Meanwhile, as "human capacities for emotion evolved to increase moral commitments to others, social structures and culture," as Turner and Stets (2006, p. 544) explicated, human emotions "are ultimately connected to

J. Liu (\*)

Center for Tracking and Society & Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: liujun@hum.ku.dk

morality." Activists and movement organizations utilize moral judgment to motivate political action as emotionally laden conscientious objection (e.g., Horberg et al., 2011), evoke moral shock and outrage to spur movement participation even in the absence of a network of contacts (e.g., Goodwin et al., 2000), and maneuver moral appeal and rhetoric to heighten positive emotions for mobilization and involvement (e.g., Jung, 2020; Lipsitz, 2018).

Yet studies concerning emotions in online activism—let alone emotions and morality—have remained "marginal" (Ahmed et al., 2017, p. 447), even though the Internet, especially social media, is increasingly becoming a relevant sphere for the expression, activation, and contagion of emotions when people engage in political behavior (e.g., Ahmed et al., 2017; Jones et al., 2013; Knudsen & Stage, 2012). So far, scholarship in this vein has paid less attention to the complexity between emotions and different political participation behaviors in online activism. As Wahl-Jorgensen (2012) explained, a presumption that considers emotion as the opposite of reason and rationality fundamentally leads to such a lacuna in interrogating mediated political participation. Furthermore, among studies that have explored emotions and political participation, most have considered cases in democratic contexts (e.g., Lee & Kwak, 2014; Valentino et al., 2011), leaving fewer looking at cases in a nondemocratic context, where a repressive or high-risk sociopolitical context may lead to distinctive patterns of emotional expression (e.g., Dal & Nisbet, 2020; Yang & Jiang, 2015).

To fll in the lacuna, this chapter analyzes emotional expressions and corresponding moral dimensions in messages posted on the Chinese social media Weibo, and the participation character of public responses online, modeling their emergence and trajectories, and explaining the conditions that are necessary for them to evolve. The Quangang "carbon nine leak incident," representing online environmental activism in 2018, is used as the case, with the investigation of emotional expressions in social media posts and different types of political participation online, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Our emotion-rich fndings offer the following insights and implications for the understudied complexity of emotions and political participation in an authoritarian context. For one thing, the relationship between different emotional expressions and online participation remains complicated and thus cannot be grouped together without regard for the specifc event and its context. For another, a deliberative appropriation and management of moral dimensions in a repressive context have shaped emotional expressions into different roles than those in a democratic context. Particularly, this study reveals how the management and performance of moral emotions like anger and disgust by activists succeeded in attracting attention and encouraging online political participation in an authoritarian context. Besides, as basic human moral principles and foundations, empathy and sympathy—moral experiences in short—also facilitated the generation and expression of activists' emotions. By doing so, we advocate that a contextualized understanding of both emotions and morality in social movements should drive scholarly inquiry.

In the sections below, we frst present a review of scholarship concerning emotions, morality, and (online) political activism, to illustrate the bourgeoning research into emotions and online activism. With an acknowledgment of their contributions, we pinpoint two gaps that our study flls: the lack of understanding of the complexity of emotions, morality, and online participation behaviors, and the less-studied dimension of emotions and online activism in a nondemocratic context. Then, we draw on theories of emotion and online political participation behaviors as a basis for our theoretical reasoning, and we propose our research questions. Third, we lay out our methodological strategy, including case selection, data collection, and analytical approaches. Fourth, we present our fndings and discussions with plausible explanations, limitations, and refections on our conclusion.

## **Emotions in Political Participation**

Discussion of the role of emotions in political participation has experienced a process of being central, abolished, and resurgent (Goodwin et al., 2000; Jasper, 1998, 2011). Until the 1960s, emotions occupied a core role in crowds' political behavior *outside* normal institutions (e.g., Le Bon, 1897, p. 51; Turner & Killian, 1957). Yet emotions can sometimes denote immorality, while activists are sometimes considered to be insane, alienated (Kornhauser, 1959), and socially dysfunctional (Lasswell, 1986). Rational-actor, structural, and organizational models, then, shifted their focus away from analyses of emotions (e.g., Gamson, 1975; McAdam, 1982), as political participants have been treated as being rational and morally acceptable, driven by an organization-based instrumental logic that "prevent[s] their being emotional" (Goodwin et al., 2000, p. 70).

Yet as later studies have argued, emotionality should not be treated as counterposing, but rather as complementary to and interlaced with rationality. As Goodwin et al. (2009, p. 9) explained, "emotions can be strategically used by activists and be the basis for strategic thought." The integration of the cultural–emotional dimension of social movements—"the cultural turn" coined in some studies (e.g., Goodwin et al., 2000, p. 77; Goodwin et al., 2004)—restores and revives the necessity to recognize and capture emotional motivations and moral sensitivities for political action (Hoggett & Thompson, 2012; Jasper, 2008). As Goodwin and Pfaff (2001, p. 301) argued, "bringing emotions back in" is important not so much for the experiential richness it uncovers but because it "promises … a better causal understanding of the 'nuts and bolts' of popular mobilization, including a better grasp of factors like social networks, collective identities, and shared beliefs."

With acknowledgment of emotion as a signifcant element in movement and activism, studies have explicated various roles that many types of emotions and moral impulses play in inspiring, energizing, or inhibiting political action when citizens engage with politics in different contexts. As a moral emotion "based on moral intuitions and principles" (Jasper, 2011, p. 287), anger is often considered to be a pivotal factor in the recruitment to, motivation for, and sustainability of political participation (Gould, 2009; Kühne & Schemer, 2015; Rodgers, 2010; Stürmer & Simon, 2009). As the most prevalent emotion in movements (Goodwin & Pfaff, 2001, p. 285), fear or moral panic would do the most to cripple collective action and destroy political rationality, as it leads people to act hastily—to panic—rather than to evaluate actions carefully (Jasper, 2018, p. 38). While positive emotions like pride, joy, happiness, and compassion would move people to engage in protest and express discontent (Ammaturo, 2016; Goodwin et al., 2000), negative emotions such as frustration, disgust (Herzog & Golden, 2009), shame (Goodwin & Pfaff, 2001), and guilt (Norgaard, 2006) may discourage engagement in political action (for a general discussion, see Whittier, 2011). In reality, political activists strategize which types of emotions to display, as emotions differ in their hierarchies of values and moral (in)superiority and their subsequent capacities to stimulate or suppress various participation behaviors (Goodwin et al., 2004).

While the question of how different online or computer-mediated emotion is from face-to-face emotion may remain somehow contested (e.g., Manstead et al., 2011; Rice & Love, 1987), studies have increasingly acknowledged the similarity of the communication of emotions in face-to-face and computer-mediated interactions (Derks et al., 2008; Garde-Hansen & Gorton, 2013; Manstead et al., 2011). Following such acknowledgment, the explanatory value of emotions in political behavior has been employed in the elaboration of online activism. For instance, blended with opinion, fact, and emotion, tweets during the Egyptian Uprising of 2011 entailed emotive and phatic expressions, consequently establishing "affective publics" that were mobilized through expressions of sentiment, and engaging them with politics emotionally (Papacharissi, 2015; Papacharissi & de Fatima Oliveira, 2012). Margolin and Liao (2018) explained the role of emotional expression in building solidarity and sustaining participation among social media crowds. Valenzuela et al. (2012) found that Facebook use illustrates political grievances as "the most important driver of protest behavior." Himelboim et al. (2016) interrogated how emotional valence—positive and negative affect—shapes Twitter conversations on politics. Terms like "affective online environment" (Knudsen & Stage, 2012, p. 149) and "online emotional appeals" (Jones et al., 2013) have emerged to denote the emotion-rich circumstance of the online environment and emotiondriven political expression and activism within it.

Without denying the relevance of existing scholarship, we wish to point to two limitations, which this study addresses. First, even though studies have illustrated the role of emotions in online activism, most of them have delimited the scope of online political participation as posting or sharing (i.e., reposting) behavior on social media. To be clear, previous studies have oversimplifed a variety of forms and degrees of political participation behaviors online by primarily focusing on what people post (e.g., Ahmed et al., 2017; Himelboim et al., 2016; Margolin & Liao, 2018) or repost (Song et al., 2016) on social media. Yet the conceptualization of online political participation involves a range of political "acts" (Verba & Nie, 1987, p. 2) that capture different means and interactions that are enabled by the affordance of digital technology and taken by citizens to engage in politics beyond (re)posting behavior (e.g., Bakker & De Vreese, 2011; Vissers & Stolle, 2014). In a general discussion, Bakker and De Vreese (2011) differentiated between digital active participation (including responding to information online, signing a petition

online, and online poll participation) and digital passive participation (visiting different websites) on the Internet. Taking Facebook-based participation and traditional offine participation into consideration, Vissers and Stolle (2014) illustrated how Facebook fosters a range of political participation activities, such as "liking" and starting or joining a Facebook group. Furthermore, Carlsen et al. (2021) illustrated the infuence of patterns of online interaction on shaping divergent individuallevel participation activities in political protest. Given the consideration of diverse participation behavior online, we hypothesize the following:

*Hypothesis: Different emotional expressions exert varying infuence on various participation behaviors online.*

The other limitation points to the fact that existing studies have been predominantly situated in the democratic context, with little attention being paid to the authoritarian context, where freedom of expression may be curtailed by repression and emotional expression thus encounters suppression by the regime (Calingaert, 2010; Riis & Woodhead, 2010). Emotions are furthermore contextually articulated, experienced, perceived, and regulated (Barrett et al., 2011; Mesquita & Boiger, 2014; Scherer et al., 2011; van Kleef et al., 2016), as "context both produces emotion and shapes how emotion is interpreted" (Greenaway et al., 2018, p. 2). Activists subsequently perform "emotion work," or "the act of trying to change in degree or quality an emotion or feeling" (Hochschild, 1979, p. 561), to shape the trajectory of the movement and leverage its outcome. We hence ask the following:

*Research Question (RQ): How do online users express themselves* via *emotion work in the authoritarian context, and with which kind of political participation behaviors as the result, when they face the regime's suppression?*

## **Method**

## *Case Selection*

We take online environmental activism in the "carbon nine leak incident" (hereafter "the incident") in Quangang, in southeast China's Fujian Province, as a paradigmatic case study (Flyvbjerg, 2006, p. 232) for emotions and online political participation, a case that highlights general characteristics of online environmentally driven political participation in contemporary China (also see, e.g., Brunner, 2017). The incident involved a petrochemical spill into the sea, with water and air pollution and 52 nearby residents hospitalized for medical treatment, due to the suspicion of being exposed to the leaked petrochemical contaminant (Shen, 2018). Both news media, like the Communist Party mouthpiece *People's Daily*, and social media, including Weibo, covered this incident, so that it drew national attention. The discussions included Weibo users calling on the public to pay attention to this incident, arguing against the government's reaction, questioning the authenticity of the information, and urging the authorities to publish the truth and take effective action to reduce the damage.

We choose the discussion of the incident on Weibo for the following three reasons. First, Weibo maintains an infuential platform in contemporary China. Over 130 million, daily active users have established Weibo as a vibrant, contested, and high-visibility space in which people express and share opinions on political issues, disclose and criticize government malfeasance, and mobilize political action even "before authorities and censors [can] react" (Chan et al., 2013, p. 384). For that reason, Weibo remains a prime mechanism for exploring the evolving participation in online activism. Second, environmental activism is received with more tolerance by the authorities than other types of activism. Environmental activism mainly concerns environmental issues and does not challenge the authoritarian role, which fundamentally lowers the political risk of the activism itself, decreases the level of censorship by the regime, and hence spurs political participation (e.g., Sullivan & Xie, 2009; Yang, 2009).

Third, while "affective appeals" (Brunner, 2017, p. 666), such as communication of grievances (Pu & Scanlan, 2012), fourish in online activism, in recent years the regime has adopted new strategies to govern online expression via the discourse of "wenming," or civility, to suppress negative emotional energies like anger and indignation in order to demobilize activism online (Yang, 2018). Discerning emotional expressions in online activism in China hence offers a worthwhile opportunity to probe into the issue of how such new strategies of governance may discourage or undermine online activism, or how Internet users tactically employ emotion work to counter the government's "civilizing" initiative—thereby offering invaluable insight into an understudied feld.

## *Research Design*

We employed an exploratory mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative) research design to analyze the data set. This design was most appropriate because we wanted to explore and explain the nature of emotions and online political participation by reducing overreliance on statistical data to explain a social occurrence and experiences that were mostly subjective (i.e., emotions) in nature. More specifcally, in attempting to analyze the data, multiple linear regression and qualitative content analysis were combined according to the type of data analysis needed. While quantitative regression analysis can provide much room for identifying predictive variables, qualitative analysis allows for a nuanced interpretation and insight into meanings within online posters and interactions. For the qualitative part, we selected examples from posters on the Quangang event for analysis. The research was conducted in phases between November 4, the day that the incident occurred, and November 30, 5 days after the authorities announced the offcial result of the investigation. The data were collected sequentially to explore and to explain participation patterns that emerged in relation to various emotions. In short, statistical analysis and qualitative content analysis were combined and considered complementary to each other (Johnson et al., 2007) because they all helped in elaborating different aspects of emotions and online participation on the site as directed by the research questions.

## *Sample*

To operationalize our hypothesis and RQ about how emotional expressions and emotion work shape various online participation behaviors, we collected original content (Weibo posts; their released time; and numbers of likes, comments, and shares) over the 26-day period. Given the affordances of Weibo, the types of online participation behaviors in this case involve posting, sharing, "liking," and commenting.

We adopted "Quangang carbon nine" as the keyword on an hourly basis on the advanced search page and extracted the publicly accessible content of the posts via the User Timeline Application Programming Interface (API) function, as allowed by Weibo.1 We chose publicly accessible posts rather than censored ones, if any, because the former allowed us to explore the observable public's emotional reaction to the incident.

In total, 70,869 Weibo posts were collected. From among them, we randomly selected 1% (i.e., 709 posts). After data cleaning to remove content such as advertisements, we got 497 valid posts as the dataset for this study.

## *Coding, Measurement, and Analytical Strategies*

We started with manual coding of the types of emotions observed in the posts and of the types of participation behaviors online. Then, through interpretive inquiry (Creswell & Poth, 2017, p. 39) concerning the content, we explored plausible relations among emotional expressions, emotion work, and political participation behaviors online.

For the quantitative analysis, we did not apply automatic sentiment detection methods, as it is still diffcult for computer programs to automatically identify emotions in rhetoric (Quan & Ren, 2010) and the specifc context of emotional content (Küster & Kapps, 2013). Expression on Weibo would be even more complicated and obtuse than on other social media like Twitter, since people adopt various rhetorical skills to evade censorship (Yang & Jiang, 2015). Manual coding, instead of automated computational methods, ensures accuracy and reliability. To do so, we established a coding scheme to identify different emotional expressions of posts and different online political participation behaviors. For emotional expressions, we

<sup>1</sup>We adopted "hour" as the minimum time period allowed by Weibo to grab all publicly accessible content displayed each time and then conducted multiple searches to maximize the integrity of the data. Yet Weibo limited its data search collection to the frst 50 pages at a time.

frst differentiated between posts with emotional expression or not, in terms of the defnition of Derks et al. (2008, pp. 767–768), i.e., emotional communication as "the recognition, expression and sharing of emotions or moods between two or more individuals" in *both* explicit and implicit ways. For posts with emotional expressions, we then adopted Ekman's model that divides emotions into six basic types, i.e., happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust (Ekman, 1994; Ekman & Friesen, 1971), and we integrated the defnitions in VandenBos (2007) and Cherry (2020). Meanwhile, as emotional expressions could be ambiguous and complex, we added "others" as the seventh type. A detailed coding and measurement process, through an iterative process, deployed the following categorization:


*Happiness*, a pleasant emotional state characterized by feelings of contentment, joy, gladness, gratifcation, satisfaction, and well-being.

*Sadness*, an unhappy emotional state characterized by feelings of disappointment, grief, hopelessness, disinterest, and dampened mood.

*Anger*, characterized by feelings of hostility, frustration, and antagonism toward others. It manifests itself as behaviors designed to remove the object of the anger (e.g., determined action) or behaviors designed merely to express the emotion (e.g., swearing).

*Disgust*, a strong aversion, e.g., to the taste, smell, or touch of something deemed revolting, or toward a person or behavior deemed morally repugnant.

*Surprise*, typically resulting from the violation of an expectation or the detection of novelty in the environment, which can be positive, negative, or neutral.

*Fear*, a basic, intense emotional response to an immediate threat.

And *Others*, i.e., ambiguous cases.

Examples of each type of emotional Weibo post are shown in (Appendix, Table 12.3).

Concerning the types of political participation behaviors online, as stated we looked at (a) posting behavior, represented by the number of posts every day; and (b) corresponding reactions to posts with emotional expression, represented by the numbers of shares, comments, and "likes." The relationship between different emotional expressions and their reactions exemplifes the complexity of emotions and various participation behaviors online.

Two native Chinese speakers familiar with Weibo and Chinese politics applied the set of codes. They assessed each of the seven types of emotions in every Weibo post in the dataset. For instance, in our data, when one post stated "So many [people] are reposting information [on this incident], but it [the topic] still cannot be seen on the list of the trending topics? It is shocking!!!," such narrative exemplifes how the poster perceived the control over social media trends in this case as the violation of an expectation—or, the emotion of "surprise." Similarly, when a post claimed that "Do you not feel embarrassed or ashamed when eating people's 'steamed bun'? That's too much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!," the multiple exclamation marks indicate extreme anger. Furthermore, if a post contained multiple emotional expressions, all types of emotions would be recorded. The two coders jointly coded the frst 120 posts, and after a discussion of the differences and achievement of consensus, they independently coded the remaining 377 posts. The intercoder reliability was between 0.940 and 0.730 (Cohen's kappa, more details in Appendix, Table 12.4). As a result of this coding, the number of each type of Weibo posting is shown in Table 12.1. The total number of posts of each specifc type exceeds the total number of emotional Weibo posts because when a post contains many kinds of emotions, it will be marked several times.

In the establishment of a multiple linear regression model, the independent variables were the daily emotional intensity of seven types of emotions, indicated by the number of Weibo posts of each type of emotion per day, and the dependent variables were the participation behaviors of actors every day, represented by the number of instances of forwarding, comments, and "likes." Statistical analysis was conducted via SPSS 20.0.

## **Analysis Results**

## *Descriptive Analysis*

Figures 12.1 and 12.2 show the number of Weibo posts that included the keyword "Quangang carbon nine" and the numbers of their corresponding shares, comments, and likes on a daily basis. As Fig. 12.1 shows, the discussion began to ferment and grow on November 5, illustrated by an increase in posting behavior as people actively joined in the discussion. The number of discussions reached a frst peak on


**Table 12.1** Distribution of Weibo with different emotional types

**Fig. 12.1** The number of Weibo posts on a daily basis

**Fig. 12.2** The numbers of shares, comments, and "likes" on a daily basis

November 6 and a second one on November 8, before decreasing. On November 25, the day when the government released the offcial result of the investigation, the number of discussions increased.

The trend for the numbers of shares, comments, and "likes," representing different participation behaviors, demonstrates a similar pattern, as shown in Fig. 12.2.

Regarding various emotional expressions, disgust (mean [*M*] = 3.67) is the strongest emotion, followed by sadness (*M* = 2.19), anger (*M* = 1.41), surprise (*M* = 0.56), and happiness (*M* = 0.44). Yet surprisingly, fear (*M* = 0.37) is not as strong as other types of emotions, even though the Quangang carbon nine event was a serious pollution accident that was supposed to trigger frightened responses about the health threat by air and water pollution from the leakage. Moreover, the "others" type is also relatively strong (*M* = 1.67).

A closer look at the evolution of various emotional expressions (see Fig. 12.3) tells us that emotional expressions escalated between November 5 and November 11 and achieved a peak for disgust, sadness, anger, and other emotions. Then, around November 25, emotional expressions heightened again, when the local government released the offcial investigation, conceding that the actual leakage volume turned out to be almost ten times that was announced in the beginning (Quangang District Environmental Protection Bureau, 2018). Disgust, anger, surprise, sadness, and other emotions then intensifed between November 25 and 27.

Taking the trajectories of various emotional expressions in Weibo posts and different online participation behaviors into consideration, we see, frst, that the general trend of emotional intensity was by and large consistent with that of online discussions on a daily basis. Second, as for participation behaviors for posts with emotional expressions—i.e., shares, comments, and likes—people's emotions mounted in the same way as the numbers of shares, comments, and likes around November 10 and 25. Yet on November 7, when the intensities of disgust, sadness, and anger dropped signifcantly, sharing and liking behavior reached a small peak instead. Similarly, the next day, when emotional expressions accelerated, their level of participation declined—which seems contrary to most extant studies reported (Gould, 2009; Kühne & Schemer, 2015; Leach et al., 2006; Rodgers, 2010). This implies that there would be a disparate impact of different emotions on various participation behaviors.

**Fig. 12.3** The trajectories of different types of emotional expression

## *Hypothesis Testing*

We started with a statistical analysis of the hand-coded sample of observed emotions in Weibo posts. To explore the infuence of different emotional expressions on online political participation behaviors, we conducted multiple linear regression with the numbers of seven types of emotional expression (i.e., six basic emotions and "others") in Weibo posts as independent variables (*IV*s), and the numbers of shares, comments, and likes as dependent variables (*DV*s) on a daily basis. After modal optimization, invalid *IV*s were excluded automatically. The regression analysis revealed different types of emotional expressions and their divergent impact on different types of participation behaviors online (Table 12.2).

More specifcally, Table 12.2 frst reveals that different emotional expressions exerted a distinct infuence on the same type of participation behavior. For the sharing behavior, surprise (*B* = 330.844\*\*\*), sadness (*B* = 65.051\*\*), and others (*B* = 33.997\*) showed a positive relationship with the number of shares, while disgust (*B* = −77.406\*\*\*) had a negative relationship. For the commenting behavior, surprise (*B* = 264.728\*\*\*), anger (*B* = 49.320\*), and fear (*B* = 81.463\*) exerted a positive impact, while disgust (*B* = −53.591\*\*\*) remained a negative impact. For the "like" behavior, surprise (*B* = 407.849\*\*\*) had a positive impact, yet fear (*B* = −265.408\*\*) had a negative one.

Second, as illustrated in Table 12.2, we found that the same type of emotional expression generates diverging infuence on participation behaviors. While surprise can best lead to all three types of online participation behavior—which has been less recognized in the literature—disgust inhibits both sharing and commenting behavior. Sadness facilitates sharing behavior, while anger encourages commenting behavior. Fear promotes commenting behavior but hinders "like" behavior. To


**Table 12.2** OLS Regression models of the relationship between emotional expressions and online political participation behaviors

a Independent variables: the emotional intensity of six types of emotions per day; dependent variables: participation behaviors of actors per day

b Method: Stepwise. Some independent variables are eliminated because of insignifcance c All reported coeffcients are unstandardized

d \**p* < 0.05; \*\**p* < 0.01; \*\*\**p* < 0.001 summarize, these fndings confrm our hypothesis that different emotional expressions have a varied impact on different participation behaviors online.

## **Discussions**

To answer the question regarding how online users express themselves via emotion in the authoritarian context, and with which types of political participation behaviors as the result, in this section, we complemented the statistical fndings with qualitative interpretations of the content of the posts, to explain the appropriateness of emotions and morality as well as subsequent participation behavior.

## *The Trajectory of Emotions and Online Participations*

An overview of the evolving of the event sets the background for the discussion. Online activism participation reached its peak on November 7, 10, and 25 (Fig. 12.2). On November 7, an unverifed Weibo user circulated a sentimental post in a proselike way, expressing grief at the pollution of Quangang. This post attracted a signifcant number of incidences of sharing and praising. On November 10, *Toutiao Xinwen*, i.e., Sina News Center, released an open letter from the United Front Department of Quangang District on the leakage of carbon nine, calling on the public not to believe or spread rumors. Against its expectations, the post instead triggered strong contention, resulting in a large number of Weibo users expressing their dissatisfaction through sharing and commenting behavior. On November 25, CCTV News, the offcial account of the state television broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV)'s news center, released a briefng on the Quanzhou Municipal Government's press conference, claiming that the incident was a malicious concealment of the real leakage volume by the enterprise involved and that compulsory measures had already been taken against the persons responsible. This briefng further sparked the third wave of online participation.

Against the backdrop, throughout the event, the disgust emotion mainly involves the public's criticism and dissatisfaction with the government's reactions to the aftermath of the accident, along with the public's aversion to the government's excessive control over the fow of information. The sadness, next, mainly refers to sympathy and compassion for the victims of the accident, but also disappointment and helplessness in the face of local government inaction. The emotional content of anger is similar to that of disgust. Nevertheless, the expression of anger is more intense and confrontational than that of disgust. After the accident happened, some responses of the local government, such as very short and indifferent news briefngs, were considered to illustrate a lack of concern for the victims and thus a violation of the basic moral principles of the public, which subsequently caused people's aversion and moral outrage. Then, the surprise emotion in this scenario mainly denotes the public's surprise to the information about the accident announced by the local government. Furthermore, the surprise entails the public's doubt and distrust of the local government. The starting point of fear is both the short-term and long-term health threats caused by air and water pollution from the accident. The happiness emotion is signifcantly different from the general meaning of pleasure and delight. It instead exemplifes people's support and appreciation of media organizations and individual Weibo users, both of which dared to express their true voice on the social media.

# *Emotional Expressions Toward the Incident, Morality, and Political Participation*

A scrutiny of the content of the Weibo posts reveals that fear, sadness, disgust, and anger largely derived from the attitude toward the incident per se, including toward the government's reaction. While fear revolved around environmental pollution, sadness disclosed disappointment and helplessness toward local authorities' inaction and censorship of the incident, as well as sympathy and compassion for the local victims. Disgust and anger furthermore pointed to the government's evasion of responsibility and information control.

Fear, frst of all, stemming from public concern about the environment and human health, explicitly soared, since the incident resulted in serious harm to the well-being of neighboring residents and the local environment. Weibo users employed exclamation marks and metaphors to express their anxiety and panic and more precisely, fear—about possible deleterious effects of the leakage on human health. For instance, describing the incident as "a Holocaust," one Weibo user exclaimed, "Too horrible!! … It [the leakage] is about the lives of hundreds of thousands of people … I have asked my mother not to buy any seafood in spite of the low price recently! Trembling with fear!" (@User A, anonymized name to protect identity, the same hereinafter). Similarly, another user compared the leakage to "Resident Evil," the Japanese horror game with pollution-infected zombies. Fear, essentially triggered by environmental concern, attracted people's attention and sparked participation.

Second, sadness derived from two follow-up aspects. For one thing, it involved disappointment and helplessness toward the local authorities' inaction and, in particular, their suppression of online discussion. For instance, in the face of the local government's control of dissent and its improper handling of the aftermath of this accident, Weibo users felt that they had no choice or ways to fght. Subsequently, they maintained a pleading tone to ask for more media coverage and thereby public attention by media organizations such as CCTV; *The Paper*, a slick state-funded media agency; and NetEase, one of the largest Internet companies providing news coverage, among other services. As one person posted,

I hope this can attract more attention. I beg everyone to distribute more. @*China Daily* @CCTV Topics in Focus @iFeng @iFeng News @*The Paper* @*Headline News* @CCTV News @NetEase News Client @*Kankan News* @ CCTV News Comment @Sohu News Client @*News Weekly* @Beijing News. (@User B).

The statement illustrates what Jasper (2018, pp. 96–98) coined as a "nothingleft-to-lose effect," or that people have been forced into a strategic dead end, with few options left, while these dead ends generate desperate moods, especially for those who try institutionalized political channels but are rebuffed.

For another thing, sadness also entails compassion for the local victims. As Jasper (2018, pp. 140–141) suggested, "our own life experiences allow us to gauge what someone else is going through, as signaled by their utterances. … [E]mpathy leads to sympathy, opening us to the possibility of action on others' behalf." Expressions of sadness, including emoticons, easily engendered empathy among Weibo users for the affected area and residents and consequently encouraged participation motivation to speak for local victims. For example, some users posted "Save the people in Quangang [cry] [cry] [cry]" or "Please save our children in Quangang [sick]."

Morality arises from the basic human capacity to feel sympathy for others (Jasper, 2018, p. 140). In practice, two moral experiences are involved in activists' compassion: one is empathy, i.e., the starting point of forming a sense of solidarity with others. In daily lives, we are more inclined to empathize with those similar to us and whose place we can imagine occupying (Jasper, 2018, p. 140). In this case, although the majority of Weibo users were not all the victims of the disaster, many empathized with the victims based on the love for their compatriots. This establishes the compassion and a sense of solidarity among the public. The other moral experience is sympathy, i.e., having a feeling as a result of another person's feeling, and the premise of this feeling is based on the judgment that others are experiencing a bad situation. Here, in the face of serious water pollution and air pollution, many actors felt the same feelings as the victims did, which subsequently led to sympathy for those who were experiencing this accident. Given moral empathy and sympathy, many Weibo users expressed their sadness and, more specifcally, their compassion by asking for help for the victims, so as to get more public attention and participation in the activism.

Third, apart from emotional expressions toward the incident per se, disgust and anger emotions were furthermore augmented against the government's inaction and censorship in this event. Regarding the government's response to the aftermath of the incident, many posts criticized the untimely release—and thereby nontransparency—of information disclosure and the inappropriate measures to avoid public panic. Disgust was exemplifed by how many people pointed out that, after the incident, the local government failed to pay suffcient attention and to disclose the pollutant and its potential harmful effects on human health and the environment. The public was disgusted with the government's lack of action and initiative.

Some negative moral emotions, such as disgust and anger, are often defned as emotional reactions to the moral violations of others (Rozin et al., 2000, p. 575). To be specifc, disgust has been seen as an "emotion of social rejection" (Schnall et al., 2008) because it is often accompanied by the marginalization of people who are considered to violate social norms of behavior or who have negative social value (Hatemi & McDermott, 2012). Yet the government was severely criticized out of a sense of morality by many Weibo users, as it failed to fulfll the fundamental ethical requirements to show enough care for vulnerable groups, and it did not take effective measures to reduce the harm caused by the accident to victims, especially local children.

To avoid causing widespread public panic, the government did not suspend class attendance in primary schools, and many students insisted on wearing masks during class. Since underage children are relatively vulnerable groups in society, many emotional expressions mentioning children as a group indicated dissatisfaction and galvanized online participation. For example, one post read, "Do you [the authorities] still have a conscience? What did children do wrong? Are the children in the countryside not the fowers of our motherland? Are their lives so worthless?" (@User C).

Many posts denounced both the authorities and the Weibo platform by using an accusatory tone. Regarding censorship, many people expressed dissatisfaction with and resentment of how offcials suppressed public opinion concerning this incident. For example, one post raised a question: "It has been four days since the incident happened. How long will it be hidden [by the authorities]? How long can it be hidden?" This dissatisfaction and resentment pointed not only to the authorities but also to the Internet company, Weibo. In the public's eye, both participated in the censorship practice. A post contested this practice by saying, "is it useful to remove our posts? Can you [the authorities and Sina] control the spread of the toxic gas?" (@User D). In practice, the offcial suppression of online discussion aroused resonance among Weibo users and mobilized their participation.

## *Emotion Work and Political Participation: Beyond the Incident*

Apart from the emotional expressions that revolved around the incident, we also observed performative and manageable emotional expressions, or emotion work (Hochschild, 1979), that were shaped by the institutional context of the Chinese Internet environment, which is subject to censorship. In other words, emotional expressions were strategically deployed and fostered to engender suffcient commitment among activists and to maintain their ongoing participation (Juris, 2008).

In reality, the awareness of Internet censorship among Weibo users fundamentally affects their emotional expressions and thereby determines which types of emotional expressions would be appropriate and could survive on Weibo, or not. Against this backdrop, happiness and surprise were employed to adapt to the specifc institutional context through strategic, deliberate packaging and manipulation.

First, many posts converted negative emotional expressions into positive ones, such as happiness, which would promote online participation behaviors. For example, some users expressed their gratitude to the media and individuals who dared to release or publish true information about the incident. One said, "Thanks to the person who tells the truth. #Quangang notifed the handling situation of leakage of carbon nine#" (*@*User E). Another stated, "I wish the authorities stops deceiving themselves, and thank *the People's Daily* for its voice. #Carbon 9 leakage in Quangang, Fujian#" (*@*User F). Reading between the lines, the gratitude rather implies dissatisfaction with and resentment against the offcial suppression of online discussion and the inadequate information released concerning the incident. Yet Weibo users chose deliberately not to express such criticism, instead expressing their affrmation and appreciation for those who published the facts, in the face of the information control.

Second, many posts consciously turned their dissatisfaction with and distrust of the government into a surprise emotion, using a rhetorical and ironic tone, which denoted their doubt and criticism of the government's insistence that "air quality has returned to normal" (Quangang District Environmental Protection Bureau, 2018) after the accident. This transformation not only facilitated discussions but also boosted various political participation behaviors, as a reaction. One person asked, "#Carbon 9 leakage in Quangang, Fujian# Why (this incident) cannot appear on the hot search list (in Weibo)??? Can such a signifcant thing be covered?" (@User G). Another compared the incident to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, which "caused up to 10 years' damage," challenging the offcial statement by saying that "the so-called offcial declaration of air quality and water quality indicators return to normal within one day … now our powerful Quangang's offcial agencies are able to solve it [the pollution] in one day? … #Carbon 9 leakage in Quangang, Fujian#" (@User H).

On the surface, the posts expressed shock, disbelief, or unexpected emotions toward either the government's information release or Weibo's reaction to the posts about the incident in a questioning way. The underlying meaning entails dissatisfaction, criticism, and especially irony toward the government and the social media company. The adoption of this ironic technique in political participation demonstrated people's moral judgment. Here, irony mainly focused on two aspects: (a) to query the fact that such a severe environmental accident could not make it to the Weibo hot search list; the query implied the public's dissatisfaction with the government's speech control and information censorship; and (b) to question the authenticity of the accident handling results announced by the government, which showed doubts about the openness and transparency of government information. The common ground of both aspects involved the consideration that the government violated some fundamental moral expectations of its people—that is, the pursuit of facts and truth, and especially the sense that after such crisis events related to life and health, the government should have objectively and transparently disclosed the truth. However, the local government blindly suppressed the relevant speech by deleting posts and rather insisted that the environmental indicators had returned to normal despite the fact that the local residents could still detect the pungent smell. This situation was morally offensive. These expressions exemplifed the fact that Weibo users maneuvered emotion work that not only was created and survived in the politically repressive online environment but also provoked resonance and subsequent online political participation.

Third, many posts adopted rhetorical ways of expressing negative emotions in a sarcastic, bantering, or mocking way, which cultivated a seemingly "relaxed" and "pleasant" emotional atmosphere. This kind of emotion work transformed negative expressions into humor, which is consistent with the style of expression in Chinese cyberspace and makes it easy to mobilize engagement online (e.g., Yang, 2009, 2015). Some posts satirized the authorities in the genre of "duanzi" or joke, with an entertaining and rhyming tone, which is easy to proliferate on the Internet, while subtly expressing dissatisfaction. One example was the following:

To blow toxic gases away only by wind, to clean to sewage only by scouring, to blind people to accomplish environmental protection, and to talk a good game only to achieve governance. This is what they [the authorities] did in the frst time after the incident. (@User I).

Kruschke and Vollmer (2014) showed that moral psychology and humor share a common ground, as people's moral foundations can be refected in their sense of humor. According to moral foundation theory, people's moral foundation has at least the following fve aspects: care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity (Graham et al., 2013; Haidt & Graham, 2007). This catchy doggerel used both humor and sarcasm to satirize the measures taken by the government to deal with the aftermath of the accident. The moral basis behind the post was that the government's measures to deal with the accident were not satisfactory and the local residents who were suffering were not given enough care.

In addition, some users expressed their dissatisfaction with the lack of attention to this incident by using a joking tone. For example, one post by @Sicong Wang, the billionaire son of China's richest real estate developer and a Weibo celebrity with over 40 million followers, read as follows:

Hello, you topped the hot search list (in Weibo) even when you were devouring a hot dog. However, our people in Quangang cannot go up to the list due to the heavy suppression, regardless of how much we struggle. Would you lend us a helping hand to let the authorities pay enough attention to us ordinary people? Thank you [Flower]. (*@*User L).

What was behind this joke was people's ridicule of the government for not paying enough attention to the accident. It meant that the daily life of an entertainment star could become the focus of netizens' attention on Weibo, while such a serious environmental pollution accident could not become a hot topic in social media. This was regarded an unfair and unreasonable, and contrary to the moral foundation of fairness. Research shows that the moral foundation of fairness can increase people's sensitivity to cheating and unfairness (Graham et al., 2013; Haidt & Graham, 2007). This once again relates to the fact that the pollution fgures released by the government twice after the accident were different by a factor of 10, which made people believe even more that the government deliberately concealed the truth of the accident, thus questioning the credibility of the government. This type of expression, with emotion work, does not involve excessive political risk and hence can easily survive with possible political participation.

To sum up, our research suggests that the relationship between different emotional expressions and online participation remains rather complicated and hence cannot be grouped together, without regard for the specifc event and its context. Our fndings suggest that, frst, to explicate the relationships among emotions and political behavior, we need to consider emotional reactions to the nature of the event, but also the context and emotion work involved in the event. For one thing, in this case emotional expressions directly and explicitly generated by the event

triggered resonance and facilitated participation. For another, given the infuence of contextual elements, emotion work will also be strategically adapted. The contextualization of emotion work allows some emotional expressions a wider response than others, leading to different participation behavior.

Second, the study of emotions and (online) activism should not be limited to the investigation of negative emotions, but it rather requires a nuanced, situated analysis of various types of emotion in relation to both mobilization and *de*mobilization in a specifc context. As our fndings show—and as acknowledged by a few studies (Stürmer & Simon, 2009)—emotions can also inhibit people's political participation. The mobilization effect of emotional expression on social movements is inseparable from the context it is rooted in. This also confrms our emphasis on the need to contextualize so as to understand emotions in social movements. In different social environments, the expression strategy, applicability, and mobilization effect of emotions may be diverse. Meanwhile, the mobilization effect of emotion is also inseparable from the risk that individuals who deploy emotional expression may face in a certain context. When the risk is considered to be high, the mobilization effect of some emotions that were originally considered to play a key role in the protest—for instance, anger (Jasper, 2014)—may be weakened or even have negative effects (as in this case, disgust). It would be relevant and promising to dissect the complexity of the distinctive infuence a specifc type of emotion has on various political participation behaviors, as illustrated in our fndings.

Third, our fndings offer an example from the authoritarian context to enrich the existing understanding of emotions and political behaviors that is largely based on the democratic context. As demonstrated, consideration of emotion work presents specifc insights into how emotions undergo appropriation and management in a repressive context, in which people have to strategically maneuver emotional expressions in order to survive censorship. Such appropriation and management have shaped emotional expressions into different roles than those in a democratic context.

## **Conclusion**

This study focused on emotions and morality in online political participation. We used the case example of environmental activism to explore the relationships among different emotions, morality, and various political participation beyond posting and sharing behavior.

First, via statistical analyses of a hand-coded sample of observed emotional expressions in Weibo posts, we revealed how different emotions exerted different effects on participation behaviors, while the same emotion had different effects on different types of participation behaviors.

Then, through the text analysis of Weibo posts, we explained the relationship between emotion and political participation behavior shown by our mixed-method analysis. In this case study of a detrimental environmental incident, many posts directly and explicitly involved dissatisfaction with (disgust) and condemnation of (anger) the authorities' crisis management, sympathy for the victim, and helplessness due to the suppression of online speech (sadness), as well as anxiety and panic concerning the possible toxic effect on human health (fear). Part of the reason why these emotional expressions could attract attention and encourage participation was due to basic human moral principles and foundations behind them, such as sympathy for the weak, care for people who are suffering, and pursuit of the truth. The occurrence of morally offensive behavior hence promoted the generation and expression of activists' emotions, which were magnifed and strengthened through their spread on Weibo.

On the other hand, in view of China's repressive Internet policy, social media users engaged with emotion work that transformed negative emotional expression into other types of expression that would have a better chance of surviving and encouraging participation. Understanding the relationship between emotions and participation in online activism thus required us to look beyond emotional expressions and consider emotions and emotion work, both of which shaped but were also shaped by specifc sociopolitical context and experience. As argued, different social contexts also affect the "risk" of emotional expression. In a repressive speech environment, the expression of negative emotions against the regime will incur higher political risks, which may demobilize individuals' participation in social movements. To avoid the foreseeable risk, activists will rather choose to adapt emotion work to strategically express their emotions and attitudes. In a broader sense, both emotion and emotion work cannot be understood through a universal, defnitive interpretive framework, and efforts to interpret emotion should recognize the specifc feeling rules that contextualize any study of (re)actions, communities, and objects. Therefore, a contextualized understanding of emotions in social movements is of great importance, as it not only affects the emotional expression of activists but also affects the political action participation of social actors.

While divulging a signifcant aspect of emotions and political participation online in the authoritarian context, our study also has a number of limitations. First, the research on the relationships among public emotion, morality, and political participation behavior is still relatively rough. In the future, researchers can conduct a more detailed study from the perspectives of both the temporal evolution of emotions and the spatial communication structure of emotions, such as the impact of the evolution of activists' emotions on their participation in or withdrawal from political activism, and how the contagion of individuals' emotions promotes the participation in certain collective action. Second, consideration of other factors beyond the content of the post helps us to better understand the relevance (or not) of emotions in political behavior in the online environment. Future research might integrate other factors, such as the visibility of posts, to explore the combined effects of emotions and other factors.

**Acknowledgments** The author would like to thank Nian Liu for her research assistance. Moreover, the author appreciates comments and feedback from the co-editors, Jonas Toubøl and Anders Sevelsted, the participants at the Movement and Morality seminar, as well as the reviewers.

# **Appendix**


**Table 12.3** Examples of each type of emotion

#### **Table 12.4** Intercoder reliability


## **References**


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# **Chapter 13 The Moral Dimension of Countermovements: The Case of Anti-Feminism**

#### **Sara Kalm and Anna Meeuwisse**

**Abstract** The aim of the chapter is to develop an analytical framework for studying the moral dimension of countermovements, which despite obvious signifcance for movement mobilization is rarely considered in countermovement theory. We argue that Axel Honneth's theory of recognition can be used to develop an analytical framework that allows for grasping not only the moral dimension of struggles between social movements and countermovements but also moral divisions within countermovements. According to Honneth, social struggles stem from perceived misrecognition in relation to a set of moral meta-values that form the basis of legitimate claims in Western society: love, equality, and achievement. These meta-values can be understood differently in concrete areas of political struggle, and activists from different camps tend to make quite different interpretations. With this approach, it is possible to analyze countermovements' moral claims in relation to social movements' societal values and norms, and whether and how different strands within a countermovement make different types of moral claims.

We demonstrate the usefulness of the analytical framework by applying it to the division between feminism and anti-feminism and the division between varieties of anti-feminism (the Christian Right movement, the mythopoetic men's movement, the men's rights movement, and the manosphere). What emerges is a picture of the interrelationship between feminism and anti-feminism that is more complex than the common designation of progressive versus reactionary movements. It is clear that the different strands of anti-feminism relate morally in partly different ways to feminism. They all react against what is understood as misrecognition of men as a result of feminism, but the types of moral claims and their specifc emphasis on them vary.

S. Kalm

A. Meeuwisse (\*) School of Social Work (Meeuwisse), Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: anna.meeuwisse@soch.lu.se

Department of Political Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: sara.kalm@svet.lu.se

**Keywords** Countermovements · Moral motivations · Recognition · Feminism · Anti-feminism

## **Introduction1**

In social movement scholarship, the interaction between social movements (SMs) and countermovements (CMs) is an established research feld. For example, scholars study the pro-choice and pro-life movements, the gun control and gun rights movements, and the environmentalist and climate skeptics movements. The focus tends to be on the dynamics between the two, such as how the gains of one affect the strategies of the other, how the choice of one to struggle in a new political arena forces the other to follow, and how the two sometimes mimic each other in terms of organizational structures, and even political claims (Dillard, 2013; McAdam & Kloos, 2014; Meyer & Staggenborg, 1996; Zald & Useem, 1987).

We argue that CM theory has two weaknesses. First, CM theory assumes that activists are motivated only by instrumental concerns. This assumption has been the basis of somewhat mechanistic theories on inter-movement dynamics (Blais & Dupuis-Déri, 2012). However, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, many activists in both SMs and CMs are primarily animated by moral convictions. Second, CM theory tends to homogenize the opposing movements and treat them as monolithic entities. In contrast, both CMs and SMs comprise a diverse set of actors that can be more or less loosely connected. Their agendas and action repertoires may differ considerably even though they may share the same overarching goals.

The aim of our chapter is to develop an analytical framework for studying the moral dimension of CMs. The framework should be capable of accounting for moral motivations for action and allow us to elucidate, in moral terms, the divisions and tensions between SMs and CMs, as well as the divisions and tensions within the different actors and groups of actors that make up the CM. The path with which we have chosen to develop such a framework follows Axel Honneth's theory of recognition and social struggle (Hartmann & Honneth, 2006; Honneth, 1995, 2003). This theory fts well with our purposes, as it underlines the importance of moral motivations for activism. Honneth argues that the academic study of SMs has exaggerated utilitarian motives and instead needs to strive for "a concept of social struggle that takes as its starting point moral feelings of indignation, rather than pre-given interests" (Honneth, 1995, p. 161). His theory understands personal moral motives as situated within society's moral order. This order is comprised of three "spheres of recognition" that are governed by three different principles: the sphere of intimate relationships (*love*), the sphere of parity in rights (*equality*), and the sphere of meritocratic prestige and particularity (*achievement*).

<sup>1</sup>This work was conducted as part of the research project "Civil society elites? Comparing elite composition, reproduction, integration and contestation in European civil societies," supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, reference number M17-0188:1.

We have chosen anti-feminism to illustrate our theoretical argument, partly because it is commonly treated as a typical reactionary CM or backlash phenomenon (Ayoub & Chetaille, 2020; Banaszak & Ondercin, 2016; Chafetz & Dworkin, 1987; Hughes, 2006; Kaoma, 2014; Meyer & Staggenborg, 2008; Miceli, 2005; Steuter, 1992; Weiss & Bosia, 2013). Furthermore, anti-feminism is not a homogeneous movement but consists of many different segments that often have differing moral objections to the emergence and progress of the feminist movement. Since our ambition in this chapter is theoretical more than empirical, our analysis is mainly based on previous research but also on material produced by the movements themselves—such as statements and promotional material on websites.

The structure of the chapter is as follows. We frst turn to the literature on CMs and identify strengths and weaknesses. We then move to introduce anti-feminism, in terms of its most important characteristics and its current political and social manifestations. Next, we present the framework that we have constructed from Axel Honneth's theory on recognition, followed by the analysis, where we demonstrate the usefulness of the framework by applying it to the division between feminism and anti-feminism and the division between varieties of anti-feminism (the Christian Right movement, the mythopoetic men's movement, the men's rights movement, and the manosphere). The chapter ends with a summary.

## **Countermovement Theory**

The literature on CMs took off when researchers in the 1960s and 1970s noted that the organized protests of the SM of that era were strikingly similar to the movements that were opposed to it. They often used the same tactics and the same repertoires of action, their inner dynamics was similar, and they both aimed for social change, though they clashed over the direction this social change should take (Dillard, 2013).

The frst generation of scholars had a normative and evaluative approach to the subject. To them, SMs and CMs were fundamentally different in terms of politics. Their opinion was that SMs represented society's underdogs—they wanted to challenge the status quo, rework societal power relationships, and were socially progressive and often leftist in orientation. In contrast, CMs represented societal elites who wanted to defend the status quo, as its activists feared a loss of privilege and status and were, therefore, conservative, or even reactionary (Mottl, 1980). The political context of these authors seemed to confrm this presumption. For example, the success of the civil rights movement caused strong and vocal resistance among conservatives, as later shown by Doug McAdam and Karina Kloos in their historical study of the dynamics between party politics and progressive and backlash movements in the USA (McAdam & Kloos, 2014).

However, later generations of scholars challenged the inclusion of political orientation as part of the theoretical defnitions of SMs and CMs. According to Lo (1982), general resistance to social and political change cannot be seen as a core element of a CM, as both SMs and CMs advocate some changes and resist others. Instead, the defning feature needs to be its resistance to another *movement*. Therefore, we cannot assume that CMs take a given political position, and "countermovements can be either right-wing or left-wing" (Lo, 1982, p. 118). Since then, research has been overwhelmingly concerned with the dynamics of SM-CM interaction; how the strategies, framing choices, and political alliances of one shapes the alternatives available to the other. Research has found that the struggle between two movements may become prolonged so that the two sides are solidifed as opposing movements. They then become part of each other's political opportunity structure, which means that they have to take into account the anticipated reactions of the other when they decide on political action. In this situation, both movements not only adapt their strategies to gain infuence with politicians but also to defeat each other (Fetner, 2008; Meyer & Staggenborg, 1996). This is arguably the case with the SM-CM struggles over abortion, LGBT rights, and gun control (Bob, 2012; Meyer & Staggenborg, 2008). This politically neutral and somewhat mechanistic approach has been criticized for neglecting power relationships and psychological motives, such as the perceived loss of status and privilege engendering counteractions (Blais & Dupuis-Déri, 2012, p. 29).

Here, we want to make two different critical points in regards to the literature. 2 First, its focus on strategic interactions emphasizes a view of actors as rational and primarily motivated by instrumental concerns, such as infuence maximization. As important as these concerns surely are, SM scholarship recognizes other types of motivations (Jasper, 2011; Van Ness & Summers-Effer, 2018). Motivations may, for example, be linked to collective identity or the sociopsychological satisfaction of acting as part of a larger group, as we have found in a previous study in the antifeminist context (Kalm & Meeuwisse, 2020). But activists may also be strongly motivated by moral beliefs; they may enjoy the pleasure of "doing the right thing" and acting in accordance with their convictions. This can lead to inner satisfaction and also be rewarded with admiration and approval from others (Klandermans, 2015; Rosati, 2016; Van Stekelenburg, 2013). Research has also shown powerful collective mobilization potential when people have a shared sense of moral duty (Snow & Owens, 2014, p. 667–676).

Second, CM theory tends to treat the SMs and CMs as two homogenous entities. In their investigations, scholars focus on how the actions of one shape the space of action of the other. Their aim is to lay bare the dynamics between them, not within them, so internal divisions quite naturally fall out of focus. Then, the risk is that the opposing sides appear as overly homogenous and monolithic. We wonder whether it is possible to develop a theory that not only focuses on the moral dimension of activism but is also capable of grasping internal differences regarding morality while not denying that the core dividing line runs between the two entities.

<sup>2</sup>Another possible objection to the literature is that it might not always be possible to clearly tell SM and CM apart. This may, for instance, be the case with the movements concerned with COVID-19 and policy responses in various countries. One movement is critical to governments' restrictions and demands for vaccinations, while another movement instead is in support of the same policies. Thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for pointing this out.

Below, we move toward developing an analytical framework that can respond to these two concerns, but frst we need to introduce anti-feminism and specify how we conceive of "our" actors as moral.

## **Anti-Feminists as Moral Actors**

There is currently an upsurge in anti-feminist mobilizations in several regions of the world. Anti-feminism has a history that is about as old as feminism itself, but it has changed and evolved over time. Today, it is characteristic for anti-feminist activists to claim that they struggle against "gender ideology," which they see as a set of values held by a minority elite (Corredor, 2019). Another common claim is that feminism has gone "too far" in its demands, as it has assumedly taken over all of society's main institutions, silenced all opposition, and infltrated the minds of decision-makers (Hennig, 2018; Korulczuk & Graff, 2018; Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017a, 2017b).

Despite similarities, current anti-feminism comes in many different forms. "As is true of feminism, anti-feminism is a heterogeneous current, traversed by various ideologies, and present on several fronts" (Blais & Dupuis-Déri, 2012, p. 22). In this chapter, we approach anti-feminism as a broad CM that responds to the emergence and advancement of the feminist SM. We agree with Alva Träbert (2017) that we should be cautious with the admittedly negative-sounding term anti-feminism in order not to delegitimize all kinds of critiques of feminism. 3 Therefore, it is necessary to be as specifc as possible. In this chapter, we rely on Kenneth Clatterbaugh's defnition in which anti-feminists deny at least one of the following statements that are widely accepted among feminists: (1) Existing social arrangements do not stem from God's will nor from some natural order; (2) these social arrangements favor men over women; and (3) we should take action to transform these social arrangements so that they become more equal (Clatterbaugh, 2007, p. 21–22). Below, it will become clear that different strands of anti-feminism put different emphasis on the three statements.

As we have seen, many authors see current anti-feminism as a conservative backlash in response to achievements by progressive social actors (Butler, 2019; Faludi, 1991; Hennig, 2018; Mansbridge & Shames, 2008). Many researchers explain antifeminism and other backlash movements as reactions by dominant actors to threats to their status and power positions. Lipset and Raab (1978) described backlash politics as "the politics of despair." Such movements are motivated by status

<sup>3</sup> In line with Träbert's approach, we argue that it is reasonable to distinguish anti-feminism as a particular and illegitimate style of argumentation: it "does not engage with the diversity of feminist approaches, instead constructing a [homogenous] 'enemy' … It is conceptualized as omnipotent, as wielding political power in the shape of a 'femocracy'." This goes hand in hand with holding feminism responsible for social and legal structures, the creation of which it has not signifcantly impacted (Träbert, 2017, p. 274–275).

anxiety, and their efforts are aimed at protecting their members' power and values. In a similar vein, Joseph Gusfeld (1963/1986) analyzed the American confict over drinking habits at the turn of the last century. Alcohol drinking was established as a moral issue mainly because the dominant social groups used it to preserve, defend, and enhance their own status and prestige. In an epilogue written for the second edition, Gusfeld refers to parallels with the confict over abortion between pro-life and pro-choice movements as described by Kristin Luker (1984). Much like the symbolic crusade against alcohol, this political struggle is not only about the issue itself (abortion) but also about status and whose ways of life (concerning gender roles, parenting, etc.) that will dominate. Mansbridge and Shames (2008) understand current anti-feminism in a similar way. They argue that men as a group have become used to a position of dominance and come to see it as naturally theirs. Men interpret feminist progress as a threat to this expected position, and it triggers emotions that are the basis of activism. Thus, in these analyses, it is the loss of status and power that are the basic drivers, and moral motivations are not awarded much signifcance. The moral arguments that actors use to motivate their actions are seen as secondary, or as a kind of cover-up for their *real* motivations.

Our intention here is to take a somewhat different analytical route. We want to take the stated moral concerns of anti-feminist actors seriously and pay attention to them in their own right. They repeatedly provide strong moral arguments for their actions, and they often display moral outrage (see, e.g., David, 1984; Kalm & Meeuwisse, 2020; Salter, 2016). This quote is an example, taken from *Restoring the Natural Order*, which was written by a European-wide initiative that fghts against the "sexual revolution" and all that it is considered to entail: "We have a narrow window of 10–20 years left. If we do not use this time window, then the Western civilization, due to having embraced a perverse ideology, may easily have destroyed itself" (cited in Datta, 2018, p. 11). The goals are very often expressed and justifed morally, marking a clear boundary between good and bad and right and wrong. Of course, stated goals do not necessarily tell us all about an actor's motivations, which may be instrumental, social-psychological, moral, or any mix thereof. It is also possible that actors are not always fully aware of their own underlying drivers of action, and it is certainly likely that motivations differ between individuals within a broad movement, so that some are primarily morally motivated, whereas others are mainly engaged for instrumental motives and yet others for the collective energy boost that movement activity can entail (Collins, 2001, p. 30). In this regard, our CM is just like any other movement, and we cannot know activists' underlying motivations for certain. Therefore, our position is agnostic when it comes to "real" motivations, and we concentrate on the stated moral motivations. By approaching our study objects as moral actors, we also recognize them as possessing volitional and intellectual competences and as being capable of moral refection (cf. Jakobsson & Lindblom, 2016). We want to stay clear of treating them in a derogatory manner, as irrational and merely victims of their emotions.

# **A Moral-Sociological Framework for Studying Countermovements**

As Hitlin and Vaisey (2013) point out, recent sociology of morality shows that, in complex modern society, there is not *one* overarching morality to which everyone adheres, but different moralities that depend on, for example, religion, occupation, and generation, and that vary in content and are often in confict. The moral codes that exist in a society vary greatly in the generality of application, from specifc local and professional norms to widely shared abstract values for which recognition is universal or near universal (Turner & Stets, 2006). The coexistence of moralities at different levels has important implications for activism. Kerstin Jakobsson and Jonas Lindblom (2016) make a distinction between existing social norms and more abstract meta-values on what society should look like. For example, in many Western societies, meat-eating has long been a dominant social norm, but at the same time, there are overarching meta-values, such as harm avoidance and environmental protection, that animate activists and that, if interpreted in a particular way, clash with the practice of meat-eating. It is not straightforward how these abstract values should be understood in concrete circumstances, and activists are continuously involved in a refexive process of interpreting them in their contexts.

With respect to SM-CM dynamics, this may lead us to question the perception that opposing movements necessarily espouse fundamentally different moral values. We may suspect that they accept the same meta-values but interpret them in different ways, which lead them to take very different political positions. We will now turn to Axel Honneth's theory of recognition in order to elaborate on these meta-level values.

## *Axel Honneth on Spheres of Recognition and Misrecognition*

Writing from within the critical theory tradition, Honneth's ambition is to develop a normative framework that can be used to judge various kinds of social developments. A starting point is that the development toward capitalism and modernity was accompanied and enabled by a system of modern values that form a moral backbone for Western societies. These values are linked to new forms of personal identity, enabled by processes of modernization, that required different forms of recognition and could result in self-realization in previously unparalleled ways. To develop a positive relationship with self, the modern individual has to feel recognized in different spheres that each corresponds to such a meta-level value (Honneth, 1995; Hartmann & Honneth, 2006).

There are three main spheres of recognition: love, equality, and achievement. 4 Together, they "make up the socio-moral order of bourgeois–capitalist society" (Honneth, 2003, p. 149–150). *Love* captures a broad set of relationships: friendships, romantic partners, and parent-child relations, among others. Such relationships are noninstrumental and authentic, at least according to the ideal, and they attend to the person as a creature with emotional needs. These relationships need to balance a simultaneous need for symbiosis and autonomy for the person to develop a sound relationship with self. Love is described as distinct from the other spheres of recognition in that it did not appear with modernity but is more ahistorical in character (Honneth, 1995, p. 95–107). In modern capitalist societies, it fulflled a particular role by providing "a utopian vanishing point" which "allowed members of society increasingly subject to economic pressures to preserve the vision of an emotional transcendence of day-to-day instrumentalism" (Hartmann & Honneth, 2006, p. 42).

*Equality*, on the other hand, is specifc to modernity. Prior to modernity, a person's legal rights and obligations varied with their social standing. With modernity came a conception of universal legal equality, which disallowed privileges and exceptions and was to accrue to all individuals. When we recognize each other as equals, we consider each other as competent members of the political community. The precise meaning of equality is not static but has expanded over time, as political actors have referred to it to push for new rights (from civil to political and social as in Marshall's famous triptych), as well as new groups (women, ethnic minorities, etc.) (Honneth, 1995, p. 107–121).

*Achievement* also came about with modernity. Achievement is the basis of social esteem in the modern world. In pre-modern times, similar to one's legal standing, social esteem was tied to the status of one's group. Today, social standing and prestige are distributed on the basis of individual achievement, so this sphere is related to the principle of meritocracy. Unlike equality, recognition in the achievement sphere is directed "at the particular qualities that characterize people in their personal difference" (Honneth, 1995, p. 122). It includes not only achievements in the domain of work but also recognition of one's unique character, ways of life, etc. (Honneth, 1995, p. 121–130).

There are also three forms of misrecognition linked to the forms of recognition above. The frst is physical abuse, such as rape, torture, or other forms of violence, directed toward bodily integrity. It exposes the individual to the will of the other and makes the world appear unsafe. It is the direct contrast to love and the most elementary form of misrecognition. The second form is to bereave someone of legal equality. When excluded from enjoying certain rights, a person is denied the status of an equal partner in social affairs, which leads to loss of self-respect. Finally, the third form of misrecognition is the denial of one's particular characteristics,

<sup>4</sup>Hartmann and Honneth later identifed a fourth one: institutionalized individualism (2006, p. 43). In the list of spheres above, we only include the original three. Honneth labels the spheres slightly differently in his texts. We have chosen labels that are close to those in Hartmann and Honneth (2006).

achievements, or ways of life. This can include anything from insult to full social stigmatization, which socially disapproves of particular forms of self-realization and modes of being (Honneth, 1995, p. 132–134).

## *Misrecognition, Expectations, and Entitlements*

SMs, and social struggles in general, are crucial for Honneth's theory. He argues that SM studies have overlooked the moral character of struggles while focusing too much on instrumental motives that are assumed to arise from objective inequalities: "The motives for rebellion, protest, and resistance have generally been transformed into categories of 'interest,' and these interests are supposed to emerge from the objective inequalities in the distribution of material opportunities without ever being linked, in any way, to the everyday web of moral feelings" (Honneth, 1995, p. 161). 5 Moral motives are entwined with instrumental motives in some cases and in other cases motivate collective struggles on their own (Honneth, 1995, 2003). Social struggles can help people overcome humiliation, convince them of their social worth, and shape a more positive relation to self (Honneth, 1995, p. 164). To Honneth, "the experience of a withdrawal of social recognition—of degradation and disrespect—must be at the center of a meaningful concept of socially caused suffering and injustice" (Honneth, 2003, p. 132). Importantly, to say that social struggles stem from perceived misrecognition does not imply that all such struggles are necessarily justifed. 6

As we have seen, Honneth hypothesizes that SMs are formed when the experience of misrecognition becomes politicized. When people realize that their private experiences of misrecognition are shared by many others, a collective movement can arise. The likelihood that it actually does so depends on a range of contextual features, such as the surrounding institutional and cultural context and the availability of means to turn passive emotions, such as shame, into active emotions, such as assertiveness, anger, and pride (Goodwin & Jasper, 2006; Honneth, 1995, p. 137–139, 164–166; Klandermans, 2015; Schieman, 2006).

Honneth talks consistently of the experience of misrecognition as an impetus for movement formation: "models of confict that start from collective feelings of having been unjustly treated are those that trace the emergence and the course of social struggles back to moral experiences of social groups who face having legal or social

<sup>5</sup>However, one can note that after Honneth's, 1995 contribution, social movement scholars have increasingly begun to explore the cultural and emotional aspects of activism (see, e.g., Goodwin et al., 2001; Flam & King, 2005; Jasper, 2011; Van Ness & Summers-Effer, 2018). But as the introduction of this volume demonstrates, the *moral* aspect has not been the center of much research attention.

<sup>6</sup>Some movements fght with violent means or for purposes that most people think questionable. There is literature that seeks criteria for judging between legitimate and illegitimate struggles for recognition (Alexander & Lara, 1996).

recognition withheld from them" (Honneth, 1995, p. 165). We are then faced with "the analysis of a struggle over the intersubjective conditions for personal integrity" (Honneth, 1995, p. 165). The reason that people experience it this way is that we have come to expect to be treated in a manner consistent with love, equality, and achievement. Thus, Honneth's theory differs from, and adds to, those that see movements as resulting mechanically from objective material inequalities (Honneth, 1995, p. 166–167).

But what is the more precise relationship between objective inequalities and experiences of misrecognition? We think that *sense of entitlement* gives us additional guidance here. This concept originates from social justice theory and refers to "beliefs or feelings about having rights to something based on what is understood as fair and equitable" (Brandth & Kvande, 2019, p. 1157). It refects subjective but socially structured perceptions and values. Some people and groups may feel that they are entitled to less than others. As many studies—and biographies and fctional novels—have shown, those that suffer the most from all kinds of misrecognition tend *not* to take action: "One of the most robust fndings of research is that the objective conditions of peoples' lives often bear only minimal relation to their subjective satisfaction with those conditions" (Major, 1994, p. 293; McNay, 2012). Disadvantaged people often come to believe that their lot is all they deserve in life. On the other hand, other people and groups may have an inadequately excessive feeling of entitlement (Major, 1994; Fisk, 2010).This has among others been said about (some) men:

When one knows what a capacity feels like, knows one can have it, and accustoms oneself to it, one begins to naturalize its existence and comes to think of it as a right … In such circumstances, a loss of these capacities causes outrage along with mere pain. For many experiencing such loss and rage, an immediate reaction may be an attempt to regain the lost power as capacity, through the use of coercive power if necessary (Mansbridge & Shames, 2008, p. 627).

We suggest that the reason that some objective deprivations, but not others, are felt as experiences of misrecognition, which may become the basis of a movement, varies with the intervening variable of whether the suffering group has a sense of entitlement, alternatively develop it in the process of mobilization.

The way we approach the moral dimension of movement-countermovement dynamics is through the moral formulations of claims. The spheres of recognition presented above form the basis of legitimate claims in Western society, and claims of misrecognition may appear as legitimate if they can be understood in relation to any of the spheres. Thus, the three spheres are not only used for understanding psychological needs for recognition in modernity but also to grasp a higher-order moral societal structure (Basaure, 2011).

The main aspect that we will be attentive to in our study of moral claims made by anti-feminists is their interpretation of meta-values. The meta-values often fnd institutional expression in various laws and institutions in society, but each of them has a "normative surplus," which means that they cannot be defned once and for all (Hartmann & Honneth, 2006, p. 42; cf. Honneth, 2003, p. 151). The meta-values are open to interpretation, and this is what activists are often engaged in, as they

interpret general moral values (e.g., equality) within a particular context and push their understanding of each value forward (Honneth, 2003, p. 152; Jakobsson & Lindblom, 2016).

Both Honneth (1995, 2003) and Jakobsson and Lindblom (2016) have mainly written about progressive movements whose interpretation of the meta-values is expansive. This focus has also marked SM scholarship overall (Bob, 2012; Blee, 2017; Meyer & Staggenborg, 1996, 2008). However, we argue that the normative surplus also allows conservative activists to push for interpretations that preserve the status quo, and it allows reactionary activists to argue for contractive interpretations, often by recourse to a mythical historical past (Lilla, 2016). In the analysis below, we focus on whether actors formulate the moral claims in expansionary or contractionary ways. Then, what are the benchmarks against which one can make such normative evaluations? Honneth (2003) proposes two criteria: *individualization* (when new aspects of the individual are recognized) and *inclusion* (when more people and groups are recognized). He concludes that "only demands that potentially contribute to the expansion of social relations of recognition can be considered normatively grounded" (Honneth, 2003, p. 187). In this text, we use the concepts as tools to analyze CM claims in relation to the three spheres of recognition.

## **Feminist Social Movements' Moral Claims**

What are feminism's interpretations of the meta-values that the anti-feminists react to? This is a complicated question, not least of all because of the coexistence of different strands of feminism (see Evans & Chamberlain, 2015; Lorber, 2005). We can only treat it here in a cursory manner.

Feminism is usually described as a movement in three waves that have clear connections to Honneth's three spheres of recognition and misrecognition: love, equality, and achievement. The frst wave of feminism, at the turn of the last century, fought for legal equality—the right to be recognized as a legal equal entitled to inherit, to vote, and to stand for election. These demands were progressive in the sense of inclusiveness. At the time, they were met by harsh opposition on part of patriarchal society and its institutions. In the 1960s and 1970s, the second wave of feminists were fghting for having their household work recognized as real work, which introduced the principle of equality into the sphere of achievement. They also fought for equality in wages and workplace conditions overall. Under the motto "the personal is political," they further struggled for criminalizing violence and rape within the family and for gaining control of their own bodies through the right to contraceptives and abortion. As we will see, there are groups of anti-feminists who question these demands for recognition from women. The third wave of feminism, from the 1990s onward, continues the struggles of the previous generations but has also added new issues, including the recognition of fuid gender and sexual identities, LGBT rights including gender correction surgery, the right to assisted conception and adoption for singles and LGBT couples, and the recognition of intersectional oppression of women of sexual and ethnic minorities (Snyder, 2008). To a large degree, the claims of the third generation stem from the new and nonessentialist understanding of sexual identity to which gender theory of latter decades called attention. These moral claims have been met with particularly strong opposition from several different groups of anti-feminists.

In the two last waves, we have seen an expansion of the interpretation of the meta-values in the sense of both individualization (recognizing more aspects of individuals, as is clear in the expanded notions of sexual and gender identities) and inclusion (more groups of people included in existing forms of recognition). However, we can also note a shifting of boundaries between the spheres in an expansionary manner (Honneth, 2003, p. 186–188). The principle of equality has entered into the private sphere of love and intimate relations, as women have claimed equal standing in law, in the household, in the labor market, and elsewhere (Waring, 1989). Moreover, the principle associated with "love" has also entered the third sphere. Although called "achievement," it is not only about meritocracy and professional esteem but also about the much more general need to be recognized as a unique person with a particular way of life. Now, people claim recognition for many different ways of leading their lives in a plurality of family and private sphere constellations, relating to sexual orientation and gender identity.

## **Moral Claims by Different Strands of Anti-Feminism**

Below, we address some of the main strands of anti-feminism in the USA and Europe (Messner, 1997) using our Honneth-inspired framework for CM analysis. The anti-feminist mobilizations that we engage with have been selected to illustrate variety.

## *Anti-Feminism within the Christian Right Movement*

One strand of anti-feminism is found within conservative Christian organizations with growing political infuence in several countries (Graff & Korolczuk, 2021; Kováts & Põim, 2015; Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017a, 2017b; Köttig et al., 2017; Youngs, 2018), in large part due to transnational networking (Bob, 2012; Datta, 2018; Trimble, 2014). This form of anti-feminism refers to the authority of God, "the natural order," or tradition (Kalm & Meeuwisse, 2020; Trimble, 2014), and challenges or reinterprets the liberal interpretation of all main meta-values that Honneth (2003) argues make up the socio-moral order of modern Western societies. It fghts against "gender ideology" (Hennig, 2018; Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017a, 2017b) or the "cultural revolution," which is claimed to have led to social and moral decay. Some of the manifestations are elitist networks of political advocates with support from the Vatican and various other conservative sponsors (Buss & Herman, 2003; Datta, 2018). Others are mass protest movements that take to the streets in, for example, France and Spain (Kováts & Põim, 2015).

Here, we let the International Organization for the Family and its annual event, the World Congress of Families (WCF; which we attended in 2019, and which tens of thousands of feminists from several countries demonstrated against), serve as an example of moral claims within this movement. The WCF is an international gathering of conservative and religious NGOs, politicians, and scholars who work together on "pro-family" issues against the alleged "global liberal agenda" that promotes abortion and birth control, female emancipation, gender theory, and sex education in schools (Buss & Herman, 2003; Kalm & Meeuwisse, 2020; Trimble, 2014). WCF events have taken place in different countries since 1997, with key sponsors from the US Evangelical, Catholic, and Mormon right and with support from a growing list of political allies in different parts of the world, including Europe.

The Congress's core values ft well with Clatterbaugh's (2007) defnition of antifeminism, and all three feminist claims are more or less explicitly denied. The rhetoric is based on a mix of religious doctrine and science. As Buss and Herman (2003) point out, the Christian Right has developed a powerful counter-discourse in response to the perceived ideological success of feminism. At the WCF, this was clear in the contractionary use of the discourse of human rights, which pertain to the sphere of equality. While feminists have pushed for an expansionary interpretation of this meta-value, the WCF delegates gave it a very different meaning. For example, the rights of the child and of women were reinterpreted to the right to "have a mother and a father," respectively, the right to "have valid and accessible alternatives to abortion" (see the Verona Declaration, adopted 31 March 2019). 7

"The natural family" is a central concept in the WCF counter-discourse. The concept refers to the only form of family accepted by the Christian Right, which is considered to be seriously threatened by feminists. "The natural family" is a particular form of family that consists of a mother, father, and biological children, and it is built on moral principles, such as heterosexuality and lifelong marriage. That this is the only acceptable family constellation is motivated either religiously or by archaeological fndings that are claimed to show that people have always lived this way. This conceptualization allows for policy positions against, for example, gay marriages and LGBT adoptions, but "natural" also signals resistance to all forms of reproductive interventions, such as the use of contraceptives, abortions, and assisted conceptions.

Using the terms of our framework, one could understand these moral claims as being contractionary in terms of both individualization (as people are disallowed from recognition for new, sexual aspects of their individuality) and inclusion (fewer groups of people are recognized). Therefore, it is clear that the WCF activists also pursue a restricted understanding of "love" and the private sphere, as they strive to push back many of the achievements of the feminist movement. However, the

<sup>7</sup> http://www.profam.org/verona-declaration-adopted-at-wcf-xiii-on-31-march-2019/

demand for the embryo's right to life could also be perceived as a demand for an *expansion* of social relations of recognition, which is how activists interpret it themselves. Many feminists, at least since the second wave onward, consider the availability of legal abortions a necessary condition for women's freedom and equal standing. But the Christian Right's interpretation is that abortion amounts to murder of living beings and, thus, a severe form of misrecognition.

According to the WCF, "the natural family" is under serious threat, and the "sexual revolution" of the 1970s (i.e., the second wave of feminism) contributed much to the societal degradation, alienation, and "excessive individualism" that has followed. The main form of misrecognition that the WCF activists claim to experience is devaluation of their particular (and traditional) way of life. "Gender ideology" and people motivated by it are harshly criticized (Kalm & Meeuwisse, 2020). Gender theory is attributed to destroying the family and society at large by questioning the fundamental truth that there are two, and only two, genders that relate to each other as complements. Furthermore, by recognizing most sexual behavior between consenting adults, gender theory is assumed to encourage socially and morally destructive and perverse behaviors. For the WCF supporters, prohibiting sexual education in schools is imperative in order to avoid "gender indoctrination" of the young. The pro-family activists claim they are being persecuted by a global, gender-crazed establishment (e.g., as seen in the EU and the UN). Not least of all, the critique of gender ideology conveys a populist impression of the WCF (Hennig, 2018; Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017a and b).

WCF activists claim that the family is the "fundamental unit of society" (Soutern Poverty Law Center, n.d.). This assertion is perhaps the most radical challenge to the modern meta-values that Honneth identifed. The spheres of legal equality and achievement are both based on the individual as the central rights-bearer, in contrast to the premodern centrality of groups. For a very long time, women did not have the right to decide for themselves or their children, they could not initiate divorce, and there was no legal sanction of violence within the household, which is still the case in several countries. Earlier waves of feminism have pushed for legal equality in a way that recognizes women as being equal to men, and that has shifted the boundaries between the spheres. What the WCF suggests with the description of the family rather than the individual as the fundamental constituent of society is doubtlessly a contractive interpretation. What follows from it is, among other things, a rejection of regulations against household violence against women, such as the Istanbul Convention (Otto, 2019). In addition, regarding the signifcance of the mother's role in the family, there are differences between the familialist-religious and some of the masculinist approaches described below.

## *The Mythopoetic Men's Movement*

Another strand of anti-feminism is the mythopoetic men's movement, which is a form of self-help inspired by the poet Robert Bly (1990). Translated to Honneth's spheres of recognition, the mythopoetic men's movement's moral claims primarily relate to the *achievement* sphere. The members of the movement fnd themselves misrecognized in modern society's alleged denial of the particular characteristics and ways of life of men and want to defend them in ways that most feminists would perceive as a reinforcement of hegemonic masculinity. They do believe that there is a natural order and want to take action to reinforce rather than challenge it (compare Clatterbaugh's defnition, statement one and three). The movement was at its peak of attention in the 1990s but still exists today. The ManKind project organizes meetings and "New Warrior Training" in many different locations, including Sweden. 8 What is specifc to this strand is that it relies to a large extent on rituals, including rites of initiation (from boy to man) and spiritual rituals that involve drumming and chanting with the aim of reclaiming a deep form of masculinity. These rituals are often performed within large gatherings in forests and other rural places (Messner, 1997, p. 17–23).

The mythopoetic men's movement is concerned with re-envisioning masculinity, helping men rediscover their "authentic" masculinity and to be more in touch with their feelings and emotions. According to Magnuson (2007), the attempt to create communities of men that are rooted in spiritual and emotional intimacy can be considered a challenge to dominant Western norms of competition, isolation, and selfcontrol. To some extent, this implies a challenge of hegemonic masculinity, at least the part of it that says that men must be competitive, independent, and never show emotions. In contrast to this, the views of the mythopoetic men's movement may appear to be a morally redefned and expansionary interpretation of the achievement meta-value. However, upon closer inspection, the masculinity that men are trained to discover retains many of the features of hegemonic masculinity, and the movement reasserts essentialist notions in which men and women are depicted as opposites possessing complementary natures (Ferber, 2000). Feminists (e.g., Hagen, 1992) have questioned the movement's sole focus on the intrapsychic realm and criticized it for failing to acknowledge sociopolitical, economic, and ideological realities of privilege that accrue to hegemonic masculinity.

According to Kimmel and Kaufman (1993), p. 4), the mythopoetic men's movement can be summarized by four main themes: "essentialist assumptions about gender distinctions, a contemporary diagnosis of feminization of … manhood, the search for lost fathers (and father fgures), and a vision of retrieval of heroic archetypes as models for men." The adherents often base their gender essentialist thinking on Jungian archetypes of femininity and masculinity. They argue that masculinity and male comradery have been severely damaged because of feminism and modern industrial society, through which men became distanced from their sons and

<sup>8</sup> https://www.maniphesto.com/post/mankind-project-review and https://mankindproject.org

overidentifed with the world of women. Thus, the movement's goal is to regain the lost ideals of masculinity. It suggests that misery and destruction result when men and women try to deny their essential natures, and de-masculinization processes are seen as the root of many social problems in contemporary society (Ferber, 2000). All of society is said to be threatened when masculinity is lost, which is why it claims that restoration of the "natural" gender order is the key to solving pressing social ills.

Although the mythopoetic men's movement is more about personal development and empowerment than about political pressure in any particular direction, and although some researchers have pointed out that certain strands of feminism share its tendency to represent gender as binary (Gremillion, 2011), the mythopoetic men's movement has clear anti-feminist elements in some of its manifestations (Ferber, 2000; Kimmel & Kaufman, 1993). The movement's proponents argue that society must facilitate men achieving adult male status because misplaced "warrior energy" can have serious consequences, such as domestic violence and drug abuse, among others. Kimmel and Kaufman (1993) also point to a claim of victimhood and entitlement at the same time, which explains why these men who feel like boys want to retrieve their "inner king":

Men's movement participants believe themselves entitled to … the power that comes from being a man, the power we might call patriarchy, or male privilege. They don't feel that power yet—but they want to, and they feel themselves entitled to it (Kimmel & Kaufman, 1993, p. 17).

## *Men's Rights Movement*

A third strand of anti-feminism is the men's rights movement, which consists of various groups and individuals who focus on social issues and government services that they claim adversely impact or structurally discriminate against men and boys. The movement denies the second of Clatterbaugh's three feminist statements, that social arrangements favor men over women (Clatterbaugh, 2007). Some of them would also deny the third statement ("We should take action to transform these social arrangements so that they become more equal"), whereas others would agree on it as a principle but argue that it is men, not women, who are subordinated. Translated to Honneth's spheres, their moral claims primarily relate to the sphere of *equality*, where they experience misrecognition. They maintain that men are treated unfairly in society and that feminism has deprived them of the rights that they are entitled to as human beings and as fathers.

The men's rights movement includes both those who claim that men and women are harmed equally by sexism and those who argue that society is favoring women and degrading men. A common view is that it is men, rather than women, that currently suffer from discrimination, which is said to be proven by trends such as boys being less successful than girls in school, higher suicide rates among men, that they are more often sentenced to jail, and that male victims of domestic violence and

prostitution receive scant attention in society (Anderson, 2014). That men suffer and are victimized is seen as a result of feminism pushing its demands too far.

Within the men's rights movement, divorced fathers make up the most militant part of the movement in the USA and various European countries, and their legal claims center on men's equal right to parenthood (Blais & Dupuis-Déri, 2012; Jordan, 2009; Vingelli, 2017). They claim that fathers are subjected to systematic discrimination as men and fathers in a system biased toward women and dominated by feminists. They demand the abolition of policies that are considered unjustly favoring women and aim to revise family law and the legal system in order to guarantee the rights of fathers. Their moral claims are directed at feminism's perceived attack on fatherhood through family law, and equality arguments are used to assert men's equal right to child custody, access, and support.

Divorced fathers are also said to be victims of psychological manipulation by women.

Many websites for divorced fathers' groups refer to "parental alienation syndrome," a controversial theory that describes a process through which a child becomes estranged from a parent as a result of the psychological manipulation of another parent. 9 Parental alienation is also asserted in courtrooms as a basis for awarding custody to a parent who alleges estrangement or to modify custody in favor of that parent (Johnston & Sullivan, 2020).

It is a bit diffcult to judge whether the movement's interpretation of the metavalue equality is contractive or expansionary because the question of whether gender inequalities exist in the right to parenthood is, to a large extent, an empirical one and is likely to vary between locations. 10 The movement's moral claims are not expansionary in the terms of individualization, as it does not strive for more aspects of individuals to be recognized, nor does its moral claims seem to be expansionary in the sense of recognizing more groups. Rather, what is claimed is that feminism's problem formulation is misleading and unfair.

## *The Manosphere*

As parts of the men's rights movement have become active online, 11 they partly overlap a fourth strand of anti-feminism: the manosphere. The manosphere is men's activism carried out on various Internet platforms. According to the dominant moral

<sup>9</sup>See, for example, *https://mensdivorce.com/recovering-parental-alienation/* and http://www. fathersrightsdallas.com/fathers-and-parent-alienation-syndrome/

<sup>10</sup>Feminists argue that the movement's push for formal equality seeks to stop challenges to established hierarchies of power by denying the existence of signifcant general inequalities between men and women (Vingelli, 2017).

<sup>11</sup>A popular men's rights site is A Voice for Men. It was founded in 2009 by Paul Elam, who has also articulated what he defnes as a "Men's Rights Activist," see http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HdYAypmjO4s, accessed 12 February 2021.

argumentation, through feminism, women expose men to all three forms of misrecognition that Honneth (1995) addresses (physical abuse, bereavement of legal equality, denial of achievements, and particular ways of life)*.* The claims are fltered through a sense of entitlement. Men are denied their right to women's bodies, their legal right to traditional men's roles, and their right to respect when they express their true masculinity. The manosphere spreads misogynist ideas associated with the far-right and the alt-right, arguing that (white) men are under attack from feminism, leftism, and political correctness (Dignam & Rohlinger, 2019; Lewis, 2019; Nagle, 2017). It is not an ideologically homogenous bloc; it contains contradictory masculine formulations, and the severity of anti-feminism expressed within different communities varies (Ging, 2019), but their common goal is to defeat feminism. The dominating strand surely fts Clatterbaugh's all three criteria for anti-feminism.

Gotell and Dutton (2016) argue that men's right activism has changed to focus more on shifting attitudes among young men through cyberactivism than by infuencing law, and it has become less "familial" and more directed toward sexual politics. Feminists are accused of exaggerating women's victimization while disregarding the sexual violence experienced by men. False allegations of rape are said to be widespread, and the feminist concept "rape culture" has allegedly produced a moral panic that stigmatizes innocent young men while women are absolved from taking responsibility to prevent sexual assaults (Gotell & Dutton, 2016).

The manosphere has its own jargon that clearly expresses the philosophy of the movement and its status order. A common idea is that men have been deluded by feminists' world view and that this must be revealed to them (i.e., "red pill philosophy"). A major aim is to uncover the true nature of feminism as repressive and to help men reclaim their rightful place in society (Dignam & Rohlinger, 2019). A so-called red piller has reached this realization, while a "blue piller" is still misled. The manosphere is very concerned with issues of social stratifcation and provides advice on sexual strategies for male "self-improvement." At the top of the status is the (strong, virile) "alpha male," whereas the (weak) "beta male" has lower status and is associated with femininity and feminism. Men at the bottom of sociosexual hierarchies are sometimes referred to as "omega males," or as "truecels" in the Incel community.

The Incel (abbreviation of involuntary celibacy) community is made up of frustrated men that have not been able to fnd a romantic or sexual partner despite wishing for one, a fact that they blame on feminism. They share a sense of entitlement to sex and perceive themselves as being discriminated against by women. Kimmel (2017) calls this emotional framework "aggrieved entitlement," a feeling of unfair deprivation of what these men consider to be their privilege. Incels became infamous due to its participants, on several occasions, stepping out of the digital universe to commit acts of real-world violence, and even murders. 12

<sup>12</sup>Alek Minassian, who killed 10 and injured 16 in Toronto in 2018, is probably the most well-known.

The manosphere obviously cultivates an aggressive form of anti-feminism that combines ideas of power and hegemonic masculinity with ideas about male oppression (O'Malley et al., 2020). 13 Their moral claims involve a reversal of modern notions of gender equality and group welfare:

These efforts are a backlash to more gender-neutral state policies … with Red Pill men seeking not only to reclaim traditional masculinity, but also to transform modern understandings of gender to suit their own needs. The achievement of alpha status thus refects one's complete embodiment of neo-liberal masculine norms, with personal fulfllment being far more valuable than group welfare (Dignam & Rohlinger, 2019, p. 601).

These aspirations undoubtedly involve contractive interpretations of the metavalues that Honneth (2003) argues make up the socio-moral order of modern Western societies.

## **Conclusion**

This chapter attempted to address two weaknesses in CM theory. One shortcoming is that the theory mainly pays attention to the instrumental and strategic interaction of CMs in relation to SMs, overlooking activists' moral motivations, which may be just as important for CM mobilization. The second weakness is that CM theory tends to treat movements as homogeneous entities without paying attention to moral divisions and tensions within them. This approach runs the risk of producing a simplifed and distorted analysis of what characterizes a CM and what motivates its various strands.

We argue that Axel Honneth's theory of recognition as the basis for moral struggles can be used to develop a theoretical framework that enables a more complex analysis of CMs, one that allows us to grasp the moral dimensions of the SM and CM's struggles and to identify differences within the movements. Part of our contribution is to demonstrate the framework's usefulness not only for philosophical reasoning but also for concrete empirical research. Here, we have exemplifed with the broad and differentiated anti-feminist movement. Honneth's three spheres of recognition and corresponding spheres of misrecognition are well-suited for analyzing moral claims raised by CMs. The spheres can be seen as meta-level values that make up the backbone of modern, Western societies. However, they are not fxed, but open to various interpretations. With this approach, it is possible to analyze CM actors' moral claims in relation to SM actors' societal values and norms, and whether and how different strands within a CM make different types of moral claims. The framework also allows us to examine moral claims-making in terms of expansive or contractive interpretations of the meta-values.

<sup>13</sup>A more peaceful internet phenomenon is the Swedish YouTuber who calls himself The Golden One. Often posing in Viking-inspired costumes, this extremely athletic man teaches his followers how to pull themselves together, to work out, and to better themselves in a tone reminiscent of Jordan Peterson (2018).

We demonstrate the usefulness of the elaborated theoretical framework by applying it to anti-feminism, which is usually considered a typical CM that has arisen in opposition to the feminist movement. The main contribution of this Honnethinspired framework is that it theorizes the SM-CM dynamic differently from earlier work on feminism and anti-feminism. It allows us to interpret differences and similarities as the different and conficting strands that spring from the same moral meta-order; what emerges is a picture of the interrelationship between feminism and anti-feminism that is more complex than the common designation of progressive versus reactionary movements. It is clear that the different strands of antifeminism relate morally in partly different ways to feminism. They all react against what is understood as misrecognition of men as a result of (the second and third wave of) feminism, but the types of moral claims and their specifc emphasis on them vary. For example, the mythopoetic men's movement asserts that feminism has delimited men's opportunities for personal self-realization (a denial of their particular characteristics) and stresses the importance of rediscovering "authentic" masculinity, whereas the men's right movement blames feminism for the bereavement of men's legal equality in family matters and fght for men's right to parenthood. Unlike feminism, none of the anti-feminist movements make expansive interpretations of the meta-values, and several also testify to a gendered sense of entitlement. However, the moral claims of the manosphere and the Christian pro-life movement are based on unambiguous objections to all core values of feminism, though from different moral positions, and represent particularly regressive interpretations of modern meta-values. With the theoretical approach that we suggest, one would most likely fnd moral differences and tensions also within other CMs.

## **References**


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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# **Part V Conclusions**

# **Chapter 14 Paradigm Revived? Concluding Sketches of an Emerging Research Agenda**

**Jonas Toubøl and Anders Sevelsted**

**Abstract** The concluding chapter of the book points to research agendas that have emerged from the contributions to the volume on movements and morality. It does not sum up each contribution, since an introduction to concepts, methods, and applications can be found in the introductory Chap. 1. Instead, the chapter identifes six lacunae in social movement studies that have become apparent in the pages of the book. A frst lacuna is related to the bias in focus on left-wing groups, a second on the causal effects of morality, a third foundational lacuna pertains to the relationship between social science and moral philosophy, a fourth to how we perceive of morality and time, a ffth to the global diffusion of moral claims, and fnally a sixth lacuna relates to refections on the dilemma of universal moral claims versus particular identities and situations.

**Keywords** Causality of morality · Moral philosophy · Morality and time · Claim diffusion · Universalism and the local

This book set out to explore the link between morality and social movements in order to better understand the political struggles of our time that shape who we are and who we will become, struggles that encompass climate change, democracy and authoritarianism, and gender and reproductive rights, to name a few of the most pressing. Initially, we asked if morality constitutes a lost paradigm in social movement studies and argued that the role of morality in movements was once at the

J. Toubøl (\*)

A. Sevelsted

Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: jt@soc.ku.dk

Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

School of Social Work, Lund University, Lund, Sweden e-mail: ase.mpp@cbs.dk

center of attention for researchers but that this is no longer the case—even though moral claims-making is at the center of movement activism.

We thus found that it was necessary to reestablish and reinvigorate a research agenda focused on movements and morality. Consequently, the aim of the book became twofold. The aims of the book were frst to offer empirical contributions on contemporary moral foundations of civic struggles and second to explore and develop approaches to studying morality in movements—theoretically, methodologically, and empirically—in order to set a new research agenda. Importantly, the intention of the book was not to defne morality in any defnitive sense but to explore the "semantic feld" around morality: ethics, universalism, principled beliefs, ideals, values etc., and how this could translate into a research agenda for social scientists interested in social movements and similar forms of civic action.

The second introductory chapter set out the research agenda in more detail by analytically ordering the aspects of morality pertinent to the study of movements into the now familiar three dimensions: *selves in interaction*, *rationalization and justifcation*, and *culture and tradition*. As we stress, these dimensions should only be considered analytical tools to order our common exploration of the themes of the book, not distinct empirical phenomena. As we have already introduced the individual chapters and their results in the introduction, and since the aim of this book has been explorative, we will end it not by reiterating its contents, but by pointing to dilemmas and underdeveloped issues that have emerged across the contributions. If we are to revive the paradigm of morality in movements, these lacunae may help point to future agendas within the paradigm.

The frst lacuna relates to the type of movements that the research feld addresses. As McAdam points out in Chap. 3, movement scholars tend to favor studies of movements with which they sympathize. While the apparently enigmatic "Trump voter" has recently become the center of attention for a host of sociological books, it remains a fact that backlash and conservative movements, such as the anti-gender movements that Svatoňová (Chap. 11) and Kalm and Meeuwisse (Chap. 13) portray in this book, are understudied. Well-organized conservative evangelical anti-gender groups, backed by wealthy and infuential donors, are no longer the US American phenomena they used to be. In Europe as well, such groups are increasingly affuent and intra- and supranationally organized (Datta, 2021; Graff and Korolczuk, 2021). Authoritarian leaders and religious establishments organize "astroturf movements," while popular nationalist and religious-conservative movements are on the rise almost everywhere around the globe. It is highly important to understand how conservative groups organize, network, and are funded, but it is similarly important to better understand the cultural form and content that such groups use to mobilize. Social movement scholars have a clear role in providing a deeper understanding of the morality involved in these types of movements, such as the sense of lost privilege in the family, private, and public spheres as demonstrated in this volume. Movement scholars can show how backlash is not simply a matter of demographics but also a matter of mobilizing around a common moral vision. In Chap. 3, Alexander points to cultural processes of "pollution," mainly as a way for dominant groups to exclude minorities, but it is a small step to see how, for instance, "aggrieved entitlement" (Kalm and Meeuwisse) leads to the pollution of certain cultural opponents as folk devils (Svatoňová).

Second, the causal effects of morality need to be addressed. It is necessary not only to describe different types of morality and their role in mobilization processes but also to point to their effects on mobilization. In this volume, at least three authors have come up with innovative ways of pointing to the effects of morality in movements. Analyzing Chinese social media data, Jun shows how the moral dimension in online emotional expressions promoted the generation and expression of activists' emotions (Chap. 12). Fernández G. G as well as Toubøl and Gundelach (Chaps. 4 and 5) go a step further by also showing how types of moral commitment relate to patterns of differential participation, providing plausible hypotheses about morality's causal role in mobilizations. Causality is important for research internal purposes, i.e., to get out of the culturalist quagmire described in the introduction, where morality encompasses both culture and emotions, but the relationship between the two and their respective places in the mobilization process remain foggy. In a similar vein, Krarup tests the French pragmatist theory of justifcation and fnds that it comes up short in terms of explaining civic engagement in local urban greenspaces (Chap. 7). The feld is in need of more elaborated studies such as those that are presented in this volume. Moreover, studies of morality in movements are important for classical purposes in social movement research such as frame extension and frame bridging but also for "existential" purposes to borrow McAdam's phrase: that morality and ideals matter in the frst place.

Third, there is a continuous need to rethink the relation of movement studies to moral philosophy. From Weber and Marx to Foucault and Habermas, the tension between facts and norms has been ever-present in social sciences—and not least in those felds concerned with social movements, popular uprisings, and collective action. In this volume, the relationship has been thematized in at least three different—and contradicting—ways. First, in Chap. 6, Passy and Monsch insist that the question of morality be left to moral philosophers: morality is a minefeld for sociologists who lack the analytical tools to judge what is moral and what not. What social scientists *may* study are the historically varying cultural expressions of morality and how these enter into contentious action around politicized issues. Second, Kalm and Meeuwisse (Chap. 13) take another stance on the question, as they base their analysis of anti-gender movements in Honneth's explicitly normative theory of modernity as based on three meta-values: love, equality, and achievement. This is a radically different approach that uses the inherent normative measuring sticks of modernity as a way to see how movements' claims and discourses "measure up to" the values of modernity. A third approach is adopted by Wathne in Chap. 8. Inspired by post-structuralism and postcolonial studies, she posits that social movement scholars neither should "leave morality to moral philosophers" nor prematurely enforce normative measuring sticks on the subjects they study. Instead, scholars should be attentive to the moral philosophies developed by movement participants themselves; as also explored by Nielsen in Chap. 9, all movements develop a prefgurative cognitive praxis, a practical and moral vision of how what the future ought to look like, and it is merely the job of scholars to act as midwives in order to assist movements in giving birth to their visions.

It has been the explicit aim of this volume to be exploratory in terms of moral philosophical foundations. The breadth of approaches has opened a discussion that needs more careful examination: How can movement scholars become more explicit about the normative foundations that they build on?

The discussion of moral philosophy opens a fourth avenue of foundational questions related to the issue of the relationship between morality and time. Social movements in their modern form owe much of their existence to the so-called *Sattelzeit* or "saddle period" (Koselleck, 2011)—roughly the 100 years around the French revolution. Here, a new sense of time and historicity broke through an orientation towards the future rather than a static present, a sense that society was changeable. This changed conception of time continues to inform modern society, not least social movements. In chap. 10, Sevelsted shows how in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century a clear division existed between progressives and conservatives: those that wanted to expand rights and those that wanted to halt the expansion of rights. In most Western countries, there was a wide consensus around the positions of progressive and conservative. Self- and other-defnitions would be congruent. Today, a more muddied picture emerges. While some are content to be designated conservative, many seek to frame their own position as the progressive position. This in turn raises the question of how movement scholars should characterize such groups. In Chap. 13, Kalm and Meeuwisse indirectly raise this issue in relation to countermovements, as they problematize the tendency to analyze conservative movements as backlash movements, as reactions to the success of other movements. The question is, however, if we can or should go beyond the temporal labeling of movements. We continue to think of movements in terms of progressive or conservative, forward looking or backlashing, without having a developed understanding of time. Do we in fact understand time as teleologically moving toward a set goal? Are the concepts of progressive and conservative adequate? Even more radically, as Nina Eliasoph asks in Chap. 3, what does it mean for a movement like (parts of) the climate movement to cease believing in a future?

Fifth, the question of supranational or global morality in movements seems to be ripe for a reexamination. This volume has plenty of contributions that point to the trans-local character of moral claims and their channels of diffusion. As already mentioned, the anti-gender movement and similar conservative movements are increasingly connecting and organizing across national boundaries. As Jun (Chap. 12) and Svatoňová (Chap. 11) show, in each of their national contexts, social media are ideal channels for spreading emotionally laden moral outbursts through emoticons or visual material. Climate activism (Chap. 6) is obviously borderless in its various moral visions and demands. It does also seem that the global confrontation between authoritarianism and democracy, as well as nationalists and refugee solidarity activists (e.g., Chaps. 4–6), enables disparate struggles to be connected anew.

In Chap. 3, both Doug McAdam and Jeffrey Alexander discuss morality in relation to diffusion processes and the prospect of a global public sphere. McAdam points out that we are witnessing a global cycle of protest. The global effects of climate change and its consequences reach into all spheres of life and interact with other conficts and issues around distribution of resources, refugees, and migration. The result is a global diffusion of movements as well as a simultaneous emergence of movements reacting to these developments. At the same time, Alexander does not foresee the formation of a global civil sphere in the near future that could constitute the moral foundation of a global dialogue around the solution to these challenges.

The issue of global mobilization raises a fnal challenge to the student of morality in movements, namely, how to tackle dilemmas of moral universalism and particularism. In Chap. 9, Nielsen addresses this question in an exemplary fashion in her ethnography of student activists who balance universal moral imperatives against an everyday virtue ethics. Fernández G. G. (Chap. 4) also points to how universal value claims, as well as particular moral commitments to activist groups, play a role in mobilization processes in favor of the rights of refugees. Similar dilemmas will confront activists and movements that advocate global solutions rooted in the moral notion of the primacy of our shared humanity. Such notions appear to be on the defense against the continued mobilization of conservative movements rooted in moral notions of the primacy of membership of ethnic, regional, religious, and nationalist groups. Paraphrasing Alexander, there is a need to "translate" universal categories to particular situations and identities, if such moral visions are to survive and thrive.

## **References**

Datta, N. (2021). *Tip of the iceberg: Religious extremist funders against human rights for sexuality and reproductive health in Europe 2009–2018*. European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights.

Graff, A., & Korolczuk, E. (2021). *Anti-gender politics in the populist moment. Routledge studies in gender, sexuality and politics*. Routledge.

Koselleck, R. (2011). Basic concepts in history: A historical dictionary of political and social language in Germany. *Contributions to the History of Concepts, 6*(1), 1–37. Translated by Michaela Richter.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Index**

#### **A**

Abstinence, 222, 226 Academic revivalists, 224 Achievement, 298, 302 Activism, 63 contexts, 102 individual-level outcomes, 96 institutional trust, 106 participation, 97 predispositions, 96 types, 106 Activists' embeddedness, 134 Adaption, 27 Adjustment, 27 Agenda-setting movements, 33 Aggrieved entitlement, 308, 318 Agitational activities, 196 Alcoholism, 228 Altruism, 20, 26 American confict, 295 American pragmatism, 148, 149, 161 Analytical framework, 294 Analytical knowledge, 176 "Anglo-Saxon" Holiness revivals, 226 *Anstalt* strategy, 228, 231 Anti-civil, 48 Anti-feminism Christian Right movement, 302–304 CMs, 295 Congress's core values, 303 conservative backlash, 295 dominance, 296 forms, 295 history, 295 homogeneous movement, 293 manosphere, 307–309

men's rights movement, 306–307 mythopoetic men's movement, 305–306 political and social manifestations, 293 theoretical argument, 292 Anti-feminist actors, 296, 301 Anti-feminists, 295, 300 Anti-gender movements, 10, 318–320 Anti-gentrifcation activism, 199 Antihunger movement, 100 Anti-Muslim agenda, 57 Anti-Semitism, 204 Antonio Gramsci's dynamic and relational theory of hegemonic struggles, 21 Application Programming Interface (API), 271 Artifcial virtues, 25 *The Art of Moral Protest* (1997), 22 Associational Christianity, 231 Astroturf movements, 318 Asymmetric variable relationships, 110 Attitudes, 99 Attitudinal change, 101, 112 Attitudinal outcomes, 104, 113 Attractive greenspaces, 154, 164 Authentic masculinity, 310 Authoritarianism, 317, 320 Auxiliary, 8 Axel Honneth's theory of recognition, 10, 292, 293, 297, 309

#### **B**

Backlash movements, 29 Backlash politics, 295 Bayesian models, 72, 81 Bayesian multilevel random intercept logistic models, 72, 81, 85–88

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2023 A. Sevelsted, J. Toubøl (eds.), *The Power of Morality in Movements*, Nonproft and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98798-5

Bayesian random intercept multilevel model, 72 Bayesian statistical analyses, 70 Beliefs, 214 Biblical passages, 229 Bi-dimensionality, 68 BIFE regressions, 84 Biographical availability, 137 Black Lives Matter, 194 Block model, 108 Blue Cross, 218, 224, 226 Boltanski, L., 148–151, 154, 162 Brokers, 232

#### **C**

Cartesian approach, 173 Cartesian mind-body dichotomy, 173 Catholic immigrant groups, 213 Causality, 319 Centrality, 5 China, 269, 270, 284 China Central Television (CCTV), 277 Christian formation, 47 Christian perfection, 225 Christian pro-life movement, 310 Christian Right movement, 303 Christian Right's interpretation, 304 Christianity, 229 City's greenspaces, 154 Civic engagements, 32, 148, 149, 152, 161, 163, 319 Civic struggles, 318 Civil/anti-civil binaries, 48 Civil disobedience, 101, 111 Civil repair, 32, 49 *The Civil Sphere* #MeToo issues, 50, 51 moral philosophy and social science, 51, 52 movement internal moral processes, 49, 50 social movements, 47–49 Civil sphere theory (CST), 52 Class-cleavage, 123, 124 Class solidarity, 26 Classical elaboration analysis, 108 Classical movement research, 7 Classical sociology, 17 Classical theoretical coherence, 188 Classical western normative theory, 187 Classic social movement concepts, 186 Classic sociological tradition, 16

Classic westernized Cartesian notion of (political) theory, 187 Cleavages, 120 Climate activism, 320 Climate change, 320 Climate crisis, 56 Climate justice movement, 56 CMs theory, 293, 294 Coeffcients, 110 Cognition, 26 Cognitive approach, 179 Cognitive praxis, 174, 182 cosmological dimension, 180 defnition, 179 knowledge production, 180 movement intellectuals, 181 organizational dimension, 180 organization/mobilization, 180 social movements, 179, 187 technological dimension, 180 transnational movements, 179 Cognitive space, 176 Collective biblical and republican "second languages", 32 Collective effervescence, 25, 26 Collective identity, 6, 19–21, 27, 54, 96, 100, 205 Collective mobilization, 294 Collective representations, 32 Combatting alcoholism, 227 Commitment, 130 Commitment community, 121, 126, 127, 133, 134 Committed and disciplined self, 205 Commonalities, 223 Commonness, 125, 129 Communicative procedures and ideals, 194 Comparative indicators, 133 Complex mental processes, 124 Concerns, 149, 153, 160–162 Conformity, 97, 105, 106 Conscience elites, 213 Conservative movements, 320, 321 Conservative revivalism and science, 230 Constant negotiation, 200 Constructivist epistemologies, 185 Contemporary pro-equality student activism, 195 Contemporary social movement theories political and historical studies, 17 Contemporary Western societies, 123 Contentious politics, 139 Contractive interpretation, 301

Index

Conversational interaction, 121 Cooperating Congregational Care, 224 Correlational class analysis (CCA), 149, 155, 158, 159 Cosmologies, 180 Countermovements (CMs) activists' moral motivations, 309 complex analysis, 309 framework (*see* Moral-sociological framework) monolithic entities, 292 moral dimension, 292 political orientation, 293 research feld, 292 right-wing/left-wing, 293 societal elites, 293 weaknesses, 292 COVID-19, 3 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), 247 Critical thinking, 207 Cross-sectional survey, 97 Cultural embeddedness, 31 Cultural movements, 47 Cultural repertoires, 20 Cultural revolution, 302 Culture and tradition, 24 Cycle of protest, 205

#### **D**

Danish Abstinence Association, 218, 221, 228, 229 Danish Home Mission revivals, 226 Danish national identity, 106 Danish refugee solidarity movement, 97, 103, 112, 113 Danish residents' activism, 97 Danish temperance movement, 212, 216, 231, 232 Darwin's theory, 230 Decolonial approach, 174 Decolonial feminist approach, 173 Decolonial/participatory approach, 184 Decolonial thought, 173 Decolonization, 184 Degeneration, 228 Dehumanization, 177, 187 Deliberation, 196 Deliberative democracy, 194, 195, 197, 198, 203 De-masculinization processes, 306 Democratic deliberation, 208 Democratic morality, 48

Deontological claims, 9 Deontology, 195 Dependent variables (DVs), 276 Dichotomy, 178 DIGRAM elaboration techniques, 108 DIGRAM software, 108 Dimensions of morality culture and tradition, 30–33 movements, 33 rationalization and justifcation, 28–30 selves in interaction, 25–28 Direct communication, 138 Direct conversational interactions, 139 Direct interactions, 137 Disconnected moralities mobilization process, 21 reifcation consequences, 21 society's institutions and culture, 21 Discourse, 244–246, 256, 258 Discovery, 185 Discrete graphical modelling, 107 Dissensus, 198, 201, 202, 207 Domain-specifc knowledge, 125 Dramatic national moment, 103 Durkheimian approach, 32 Durkheimian relative deprivation paradigm, 33

#### **E**

Early conceptualizations, 16 Ecological sustainability, 120 Ecology of knowledges, 178 Economic globalization, 33 Economic inequalities, 199 Economic system inequality, 30 Educational attainment control, 106 Emancipation, 49 Emancipatory politics, 202 Embeddedness, 8, 107, 137 Emergence of values and ideals, 27 Emotion of social rejection, 279 Emotional batteries and liberation, 18 Emotional expressions, 10 Emotional liberation, 96 Empirical research agenda, 16 Empowerment, 49 Enlightenment frame, 222 Enlightenment heritage, 28, 30 Enlightenment ideal, 28 Enlightenment tradition, 8, 9, 226 Entrepreneurs, 232 Environmental activism, 9 Environmental commitment, 135

Environmental sustainability, 119 Epistemic justice, 178 Epistemological deconstruction, 179 Epistemological dichotomy, 177 Epistemological paradox, 113 Equality, 207 Erving Goffman's interactionist framework, 21 Ethical conduct, 197 Ethical dilemma, 197, 207, 208 Ethical life, 31 Ethical responsibility, 187 Ethical virtues, 200 Ethics, 6, 197 Ethnographic approaches, 113 Ethnographic feldwork, 198 Ethnography, 9 European political space, 123 European Social Survey (ESS), 104 European-wide initiative, 296 The Evangelical Alliance, 224 Exclusion, 48 Experiential approach, 26 External effcacy, 102 External societal regulation, 6 Extra-institutional protest and politics, 5

#### **F**

Factuality, 215 Far right activists, 241 anti-gender campaigns, 243 associations, 242 communication, 240, 243 community, 257 the Corrupted Elites, 248 Czech society, 242, 256 data and methods, 247 folk devils, 252, 254 gender ideology, 242, 243 humour, 241, 243–245, 256 internet, 240 the Islamized Elites, 249, 252 jokes, 247, 248, 258 moral boundaries, 246 networking, 240 organization, 240–242, 255 political parties, 243 sexual education, 242 the Silenced Majority, 248, 249 social media, 240, 241 social movements, 241, 243 Far-right movements' communication, 10 Feminism, 49 intersectional oppression, 302 meta-values, 301 recognition and misrecognition, 301 violence, 301 Formal universal principles (Kant), 24 Framing, 199, 212, 213, 231 Framing theory, 21–22, 50, 112 Free deliberation, 200 Free spaces, 196, 207 Free speech, 207 French pragmatism, 148 French pragmatist theory of justifcation, 148 Fundamental meaning-making processes, 42 Fundamental unit of society, 304

#### **G**

Gender-based constituency, 17 Gender-crazed establishment, 304 Gender identity, 302 Gender ideology, 295, 302, 304 Gender indoctrination, 304 Gender-neutral state policies, 309 Gender theory, 304 Genealogy, 24 Generalisability, 106 Generalised moral commitments action-oriented frames, 69 covariates, 73, 75 humanity, 69 moral norms, 69 personal values, 73 political solidarity, 76 prosocial behaviour, 70, 75 protesting behaviour, 69 ROPE, 75 solidarity mobilisations, 69 universal civic virtues, 69 Gephi software, 218 Global liberal agenda, 303 Global mobilization, 321 Global warming, 120, 130 Goffman's analysis, 27 Goodness-of-ft criteria, 108 Gramsci's development of morality, 29 Gramscian approach, 29 Green urban community engagement, 162 Greenpeace, 137, 138 Greenpeace Switzerland (GP), 127 Group culture, 100

Index

#### **H**

Habermas' deliberative model, 196 Habermas' discourse ethics, 29 Habermas' model privileges, 203 Hegel morality, 122 Hegel's culturalist approach, 31 Heterogeneity, 112, 113, 128 Highest density interval (HDI), 73 Historical sociology, 122, 195 Holiness-based type, 225 Holiness-inspired Church Army, 225 Homo duplex, 16 Human intentionality, 125 Humanitarian activities, 101, 111, 112 Humanity, 4 Humanness, 130 Human perceptions, 128 Human rights, 97 Humour, 243–245

#### **I**

Idealized morality, 49 Ideational and practical socialisations, 107 Ideational solidarity projects, 77 Identity formation, 19 Immigration policies, 97 Inclusion, 301, 303 Inclusiveness, 130, 131 Inclusive spaces, 209 Independent variables (IVs), 276 Indigenous political theory, 183 Individual cultural toolkits, 120 Individual-/group-level interpretation, 7 Individualization, 206, 301–303 Individual-level participation, 113 Individual's moral experiences, 28 Individual's self-understandings, 65 Individuals' natural self-interest, 25 Individual subjectivity, 206 Inequalities, 196 Infuence maximization, 294 Innovative research designs, 10 Institutional changes, 20 Institutional criteria, 195 Institutional trust, 104 Institutional trust loss, 101, 106 Instrumental movements, 17 Instrumentalization, 49 Intellectual-in-movement *vs.* movement intellectuals, 181 Interactional processes, 8 Interactional styles, 20

Interconnectedness, 129–131, 133 Intercultural translation, 182 Intermediary blocks, 107 Internal opposition, 8 International solidarity, 16 Interpersonal network, 124, 136, 137, 139 Interpretive method, 212 Interpretive orientations, 213 Iron law, 215 Irrationality, 16 Island of meanings, 134

#### **J**

Journal interface, 185 Justifcatory regimes, 9, 148–150, 154–156, 158–161, 163, 164 operationalization, 149, 154 Justifcatory strategies, 156

#### **K**

Kantian heritage, 9 Kaupapa, 203, 204 Kenyan Peasants League (KPL), 182 Knowledge, 177, 178 Knowledge creation, 178, 185 Knowledge-practices, 181 Knowledge production, 5

#### **L**

Latino activism, 56 La Vía Campesina (LVC), 182 Left-libertarian community, 125, 126 Legitimacy, 6 LGBT adoptions, 303 LGBT people, 120 Liberal democracy, 195 Libertarian/authoritarian, 124 Libertarian-universalistic/traditionalistcommunitarian, 124 Local UGS, 149, 153, 154, 160–163 Log-linear analysis, 109 Lombrosian theories, 228 Loss of trust in the political institutions, 97 Low- and high-risk/cost activism, 100

#### **M**

Machine Age, 16 Macro-context variation, 100 Macro-sociological, 50

*The Making of Pro-life Activists* (book), 43 Mainstream political system, 200 Many-faceted revivalist movement, 224 Marginalization, 5, 177, 201, 203 Marginalized position, 201 Market regime, 151 Market-based civil society, 31 Mass mobilization, 212 Meaning-making, 7, 11, 112 Media environment, 55 Mediated communicational interaction, 139 Mediated interactions, 137, 138 Melucci's theory, 27 Membership norm, 106 Memes, 241, 247, 249, 253 Men's right activism, 308 Men's rights movement denials, 306 groups and individuals, 306 meta-value equality, 307 moral claims, 307 sexism, 306 Mental synchronization, 134 #MeToo, 194 Micro- and meso-level dynamics, 18 Minority-related issues, 201 Mirror-image mechanism, 32 Mobilization, 18, 26, 71 Mobilization mechanisms, 18 Mobilization patterns, 17 Model's operationalisation, 102 Modern Western societies, 309 Modernity/coloniality approach, 173 Mokken scale, 104 The manosphere contradictory masculine formulations, 308 false allegations, 308 Incel community, 308 men's activism, 307 misogynist ideas, 308 nature of feminism, 308 power and hegemonic masculinity, 309 The mob, 29 Moral authority, 220 Moral beliefs, 22 Moral commitments, 8, 64 activists' group identifcation, 64 generalised measure, 71 interplay, 64 political solidarity, 66 refugee solidarity activism, 66, 68–69 solidarity mobilisations, 64 Moral content *vs.* ethical form (Habermas), 24 Moral crusades, 120, 123 Moral dilemmas, 3, 123 Moral duty, 28 Moral elite temperance network, 218, 219 Moral elites belief frame, 227–231 defnition, 214 ideological projects, 215 movement elites, 214 resources, 214 sheer force, 214 stereotypical beliefs, 215 symbolic resources, 214 values and beliefs, 215 Moral emotions, 22, 23 Moral engagements, 148 Moral experience *vs.* ethical content (Bauman), 24 Moral foundations culture and tradition, 22 moral shock theory, 22 Morality, 148, 151, 153, 162, 163, 266, 277, 279, 283, 284 causal effects, 319 centrality, 23 collective action, 24 contemporary social movement theories, 17–19 cultural construction, 120 cultural expressions, 319 cultural practices, 123 culture and tradition, 9 defnition, 6 dimensions, 7, 24, 318 *vs.* emotions, 22 historical review, 23 Hume's conceptualization, 7 institutionalized prescriptions, 6 interaction, 19–21 Jasper's culturalist version, 22 mobilizations and activism driver, 8 movements, 42, 43 principles, 121 rationalization and justifcation, 8 selves in interaction, 8 social movements, 9, 11 sociological research, 121 sociological work, 120 sociology, 6 values, 17 Moral orders, 20 Moral philosophical concepts, 6 Moral philosophical foundations, 320

Index

Moral philosophy, 197, 319 Moral principles, 121 Moral resources, 217 Moral responsibility, 224 Moral self, 122, 140 Moral shock theory, 22 Moral shocks, 7, 18, 22 Moral socialisation, 96 Moral society, 48 Moral-sociological framework achievement, 298 equality, 298 Honneth's theory, 299 meta-values, 301 misrecognition, 298, 299 moral motives, 299 moralities, 297 sense of entitlement, 300 SM-CM dynamics, 297 spheres of recognition and misrecognition, 297, 298 subjective satisfaction, 300 Western societies, 297 Moral standards, 122 Moral voicing activists, 133, 139 Moral voicing community, 11, 127, 129, 131–133, 138, 139 Motivations, 100 Movement activity, 296 Movement-centric, 41 Movement-countermovement dynamics, 300 Movement class structure, 214 Movement elites, 216 Movement entrepreneurs, 213 Movement frames, 232 Movement ideologies, 98 Movement intellectuals, 181 Movement participation, 96, 100 and attitudes relationship, 111, 112 Movement scholarship, 40 Movements and Morality project, 40 Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), 149, 155–158 Multiple regression analysis (MRA), 155 Muster "hard" resources, 214 Mythopoetic men's movement complementary natures, 305 main themes, 305 moral claims, 305 personal development and empowerment, 306 re-envisioning masculinity, 305 Western norms, 305

#### **N**

Nagging, 208 Narrow movement-centric approach, 46 Nationalist and xenophobic anti-immigrant movements, 4 The natural family, 303, 304 Neoliberal feminism, 58 Neoliberalization, 206 Neo-liberal masculine norms, 309 New social movement scholars, 29, 66 New social movement theories, 17 New social movement tradition, 6 New social movements, 19, 124 New Warrior Training, 305 Nietzschean moral elite, 214 Non-hierarchical forms, 198 No-platforming' actions, 194 Normative judgments, 139 Normative surplus, 300 Notion of discovery, 184

#### **O**

Objective knowledge, 176, 177 Obscene injustice, 119 Occupy Wall Street, 194, 201 Online activism democratic contexts, 266 descriptive analysis, 273–275 emotional expression, 266, 278–280 emotions, political participation analyses, 267 behavior, 269 computer-mediated interaction, 268 digital active participation, 268 face-to-face interaction, 268 limitation, 269 negative emotions, 268 social media crowds, 268 social movements, 267 types, 268 emotion work, 280–283 environmental activism, 283 hypothesis testing, 276 intercoder reliability, 285 method analytical strategies, 271–273 case selection, 269, 270 coding and measurement, 271–273 research design, 270 sample, 271 methodological strategy, 267 mixed-method analysis, 283

Online activism (*cont*.) movement, 265 nondemocratic context, 267 participations, 277, 278 political action, 266 political behavior, 266, 284 political participation, 280–283 positive emotions, 266 risk, 284 social contexts, 284 social movements, 266, 284 statistical analyses, 283 temporal evolution, 284 trajectory of emotions, 277, 278 type of emotion, 285 Operationalization, 5 Order institutions, 102 Ordinary ethics, 206, 207 Organic elite, 226, 228, 229 Organic social-liberal elite, 221 Organisational embeddedness, 74 Organizational activities, 134 Organizational affliations, 220 Organizational metaphors, 201 Organizational platforms, 220 Organizational trainings, 135 Original intent, 19 Ottosen's EGO network, 229 Overused but undertheorized metaphor, 202

#### **P**

Parental alienation syndrome, 307 Parsons' structure-functionalism, 122 Participatory Action Research (PAR), 174, 182 Participatory Data Analysis, 185 Participatory methodology, 186 Participatory research, 185 Partisan institutions, 101 Partisan intellectual, 181 Passive voluntarism, 27 *Peasant Intellectual* (book), 183 People's folk high schools, 220 Personal identity, 297 Personal morality, 53 Personal moral motives, 292 Personal/organizational ties, 22 Personal self-realization, 310 Philanthropic associations, 227 *The Philosophy of Right*, 31 Police and legal system, 102 Political affliation, 98 Political altruism, 7, 20, 27

Political battles, 120 Political behaviour, 69 Political cleavage, 123 Political conficts, 124 Political ideology, 223 Political institutions, 98, 102, 111 Political issues, 131 Political mobilization, 196 Political opportunity structures, 21 Political protest, 102, 111 Political solidarity activism, 67 commonalities, 77 independent variables, 77 postmaterialist and left-libertarian ideologies, 74 Political struggle, 124, 296, 317 Political theory, 186 academia, 186 academic expert, 180 critical dialogue, 173 discourses and actions, 176 literature, 173 movements' morality, 172 research, 172 social movements, 179, 182–183 societal context, 172 valuable contributions, 172 *The Politics of Volunteering*, 56 Pollution, 318 Populist intensive schemas, 213 Post-foundational and critical theories, 177 Post-industrial cleavage, 125 Post-industrial society, 17 Post-materialist/materialist, 123 Post-partum depression, 129 Post-structuralism, 319 Practical organization, 205, 206 Pragmatic sensibilities, 206 Pragmatic sociology, 150, 153 Predictors of Rank-and-File Feminist Activism, 100 Predispositions interactions and indirect effects, 97 participation, 97 Prefguration constructivist argument, 175 emphasis, 175 strategic choice, 174 strength, 175 *vs.* vanguards, 175 Prefgurative communities, 57 Prefgurative social movements, 174

cognitive practice, 186 means and goals, 174 prefguring theory, 175–176 Prefgurative tradition, 175 Prefguring theory, 175 Pre-liberal tradition, 125 Present-day social movement theory, 24 Prior sensitivity analysis, 81 Pro-democratic protesters, 4 Progressive non-conformist left-wing activists, 98 Progressive social movements, 30 Progressive stacking, 201 Project-driven solidarities, 66 Pro-migrant's activists, 129 Prosocial behaviour, 71 Psychoanalytical interviews, 128 Public deliberation, 203 Publicity criterion, 217 Public opinion, 138, 195 Public sphere, 195

#### **Q**

QAnon conspiracy theory, 33 Qualitative interpretive methods, 11 Qualitative material, 128 Qualitative methods, 11 Quantitative research methods, 10 Queer activist network, 198 Questionnaire methodology, 153–155

#### **R**

Radicalization, 5, 20 Randomised cross-sectional dataset, 72, 81 Rape culture, 308 Rational deliberation, 10, 196 Rational morality, 28 Rationalization and justifcation, 7, 11, 24 Rationalized morality, 28 Rationalized universal ethics, 28 Reactionary, 5 Real motivations, 296 Recognition, 31 Recursive blocks, 108, 110 Red pill philosophy, 308 Refective deliberations, 197 Reformed populist evangelical revivals, 224 Refugee crisis, 63 Refugee-friendly policies, 108 Refugee solidarity activism, 65 abstract systems of beliefs, 67

binary variable, 70 covariates, 75 gender caring role, 73 humanity, 67 individual universal value orientations, 68 model's independent covariates, 73, 74 moral norms, 68 motivations, 66 political acts, 66 political covariates, 74 refugee rights, 73 social movement scholars, 66 universal caring orientations, 75 values, 66 Refugee solidarity movement, 101 Regimes of justifcation, 151, 152, 154, 158, 160 Region of practical equivalence test (ROPE), 74 Regression analysis, 108 Relational reality, 134 Relational sociology, 126 Relative deprivation theory, 31 Religion, 27 Representativity, 103 Research agenda, 140 Resource mobilization, 47 *Restoring the Natural Order* (Word), 296 Retrospective inquiry, 106 Revivalist Christianity, 9 Revivalist moral elite, 227 Revolutionary ideology, 224 Revolutionary projects, 30 Revolutionary strategy, 215 Right-wing backlash, 45 Right-wing movements, 10 Right-wing populism, 58 Ringen, 226 The Riot at Capitol Hill, 44 Riots, 29

#### **S**

Sacrality, 18 Sacredness, 26 Sacredness moral principle, 4 Saddle period, 320 Safe spaces, 196, 202, 207 Same-sex relations, 122 Sanatorium movement, 229 Scene styles, 7 Scene styles morality moral struggles, 56–58 morality within movements, 54–56 society movements, 52–54

Scholar-movement dynamic, 174 Schwartz's theory, 105 fundamental human values, 148, 160 Second American Revolution, 33 Self-administered web-pencil questionnaire, 128 Self-critical diagnosis, 17 Self-defned authorship, 217 Self-enhancement, 97 Self-extension, 133 Self-identity, 66 Self-improvement, 308 Self-loss, 26 Self-realization, 297 Self-recovery, 176 Self-transcendence, 97, 98, 101, 104, 105, 110 Selves in interaction, 24 Semi-autonomous interaction order, 27 Semi-structured interview guides, 40 Sentiment, 31 Sexual orientation, 302 Situation-sensitive questionnaire, 149 SM actors' societal values, 309 SM-CM dynamic, 310 SM-CM struggles, 294 Societal confict, 6 Social capital approaches, 71 Social capital measures, 72 Social categories, 123 Social classes, 215 Social cleavages, 120 Social communities, 126 Social conficts, 123 Social embeddedness and dispositions, 71 Social identifcation, 74 Social illnesses, 229 Social inequalities, 196 Social injustice, 199 Social institutions, 49 Social justice, 194 Social-liberal farmers, 221 Social-liberal moral elite, 222 Social-liberal Students, 222 Social media, 11, 204, 240, 242, 243, 247 Social/moral dilemmas, 124 Social movement organizations (SMOs), 213 Social movement scholars, 232, 318 Social movement studies, 317 academic feld, 41 backlash movements, 29 issues, 18 moral and ideological factors, 96 morality, 16

observations, 102 research feld, 16 vicinity, 32 Social movements, 243 and civic action, 23 commentary and analyses, 4 contemporary feld, 6 individual-level perceptions and attitudes, 96 knowledge and theories, 183 lacunae, 10 main issues, 4 Marxist view, 6 moral actors, 172 moral dynamics, 19 morality, 7 moral principles, 3, 4 prefguration, 174 relationship, 17 research, 8, 212 seminal scholars, 7 students, 4 studies, 5, 7, 9 theories, 172 tradition, 18 Social network analysis (SNA), 9, 11, 212, 218, 231 Social networks, 126 Social problems, 125 Social recognition, 299 Social relations of recognition, 304 Social research, 7 Social sciences, 28, 71 Social scientist, 6, 46, 47 Social structure, 57 Social theory, 197 Society for the Promotion of Sobriety, 223 Society's hierarchical orders, 101 Society's moral development, 40–42 Society's moral order, 4, 6 Sociobiographic and socioeconomic controls, 108 Socio-demographic characteristics, 71 Socio-demographic control, 129 Socio-demographic covariates, 72 Socio-demographic indicators, 128 Socioeconomic developments, 31 Sociological works, 121 Sociology of absences, 178 Sociology of critique, 30 Sociology of emergences, 178 Sociopsychological satisfaction, 294 Sociosexual hierarchies, 308

Solidarity, 26, 199 activism, 65 actors' ability, 65 care and support, 65 dimensions, 70 political theories, 65 prosocial engagement, 65 rights of refugees and immigrants, 63 social movement scholars, 65 support and care, 65 Solidarity Across Borders (SAB), 127, 128, 134 Solidarity activism, 8, 20, 27 *Solidarity in Europe*, 100 Solidarity mobilisations, 69, 73, 77 Solidarity movement, 100 Spheres of recognition, 292 Spirituality vis-à-vis secular philanthropy, 223 State and civil society narrative, 212 Statistical analysis, 108 Street party, 198 Structural and class-focused analysis, 206 Student activism activists, 198 economic and social injustice, 194 ethical dilemmas, 194 ethical practice, 195, 208 ethical work, 197 moral concerns and claims, 194 Student activists, 194 Student mobilization, 194 Supranational/global morality, 320 Sympathy, 25–27 Synchronized mind, 123 Systematic analytical framework, 128

#### **T**

Temperance actors, 232 Temperance movement Blue Cross founders, 226 Christianity, 232 commission, 227 conservative factions, 221 Dansih soil, 231 Denmark, 216 "do-good" industry, 213 indicators, 220 moral elites, 217, 226 progressive, 219 revivalist movement, 215 social network, 225 Who's Who, 216 Temperance organization, 219 Temporal landscape, 56 Theoretical hypothesis, 99 Theory creation, 173 Theory-making process, 176 Thévenot, L., 148–151, 154, 162 Thirty-seven individual biographies, 217 Threat of violence, 202 Traditional moral elite, 223 Traditional notions, 183 Traditional temperance elite, 227 Transferability, 106 Translation, 49, 187 Transnational solidarity, 70 Trench warfare, 29 Trigger warnings, 194 Trump voter, 318 Truth claims, 46

#### **U**

Unconventional extra-institutional approach, 101 Universal caring orientations, 67 Universal class, 196 Universalism, 160 Universalist moral languages, 150 Universal law of nature, 28 Universal politics, 197 Universal social confguration, 67 Universal social justice, 131 Universal value orientations, 64 bi-dimensionality, 67, 70 care relative, 77 complex relationship, 77 continuum, 70 empirical perspectives, 67 H1, 73, 75 HDI, 73 independent covariates, 72 individual activism research, 67 individual predicted probabilities, 75, 76 interaction, 68 and moral commitments, 77 and moral norms, 69 outgroup activism posit, 68 political engagement, 77 positive covariation, 73 ranges, 75 refugee solidarity activism, 64, 67, 70, 75 relational dimension, 68, 77 role of, 74 social movements activism, 69 variations, 64

Urban cultural elite, 226 Urban greenspaces (UGS), 149, 153, 154, 156, 160–164 US American temperance movement, 213 US sectarian religious tradition, 105

#### **V**

Value-attitude-action triad, 98 Value conficts, 64 Value predispositions and attitudinal outcomes, 96–98 conformity, 104 indirect effects, 109 movement participants, 98 participation, 100, 110 relationship theory, 99 self-transcendence, 104 sets, 97 Values, 6, 8, 26, 64, 99, 100, 214 Variables, 78–83 Vegetarianism, 57 Virtue ethics, 195, 197, 203–206

#### **W**

Warrior energy, 306 Weibo, 266, 269, 271–284 Western academia, 187 Western civilization, 296 Westernized academia, 177 Westernized Cartesian approach, 186 Westernized epistemologies, 173 Westernized monoculture, 187 Westernized research, 185 Westernized science, 176, 178 Westernized theories, 183 White-collar worker, 48 Who's Who (*Blå Bog*) eliteness, 217 individuals, 216, 217 organizations and variations, 217 population data, 217 Within-movement debate, 113 Workers' movement, 16 World Congress of Families (WCF), 303