Social Movements and Networks Relational Approaches to Collective Action

For the first time in a single volume, leading social movement researchers map the full range of applications of network concepts and tools to their field of inquiry. They illustrate how networks affect individual contributions to collective action in both democratic and non-democratic organizations; how patterns of inter-organizational linkages affect the circulation of resources both within movement milieus and between movement organizations and the political system; how network concepts and techniques may improve our grasp of the relationship between movements and elites, of the configuration of alliance and conflict structures, of the clustering of episodes of contention in protest cycles.Social Movements and Networks casts new light on our understanding of social movements and cognate social and political processes.

Social Movements and Networks examines the extent to which a network approach should inform research on collective action. For the first time in a single volume, leading social movements researchers systematically map out and assess the contribution of social network approaches to their field of enquiry in light of broader theoretical perspective. By exploring how networks affect individual contributions to collective action in both democratic and non-democratic organizations, and how patterns of inter-organizational linkages affect the circulation of resources within and between movements, the authors show how network concepts improve our grasp of the relationship between social movements and elites and of the dynamics of the political processes.

1 - Social movements, contentious actions, and social networks: 'from metaphor to substance'?
2 - Social Networks Matter. But How?
3 - Movement development and organizational networks: The role of 'single members' in the German Nazi party, 1925-1930
4 - Networks in opposition: Linking organizations through activists in the Polish People's Republic
5 - 'Leaders' or brokers? Positions and influence in social movement networks
6 - Community embeddedness and collaborative governance in the San Francisco Bay Area environmental movement
7 - Contentious connections in Great Britain, 1828-1834
8 - Networks, diffusion, and cycles of collective action
9 - Movement in context: Thick networks and Japanese environmental protest
10 - Why do networks matter? Rationalist and structuralist interpretations
11 - Cross-talk in movements: Reconceiving the culture-network link
12 - Beyond structural analysis: toward a more dynamic understanding of social movements
13 - Networks and social movements: A research programme

Mario Diani is Professor of Sociology at the University of Trento, Italy, and the European Editor of Mobilization. Doug McAdam is Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, and Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.