Editorial Type:
Article Category: Research Article
| Online Publication Date: 12 Nov 2007
Niche Activism: Constructing a Unified Movement Identity in a Heterogeneous Organizational Field
Niche Activism: Constructing a Unified Movement Identity in a Heterogeneous Organizational Field
Page Range: 271 – 286
This article draws on a study of interorganizational relations in the Chicago gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender movement to elaborate a theory for how activists integrate divergent organizational approaches to social reform into a coherent "movement identity." Departing from the resource mobilization and collective identity literatures, which tend to reduce organizational specialization either to a competition over resources or to ideological differences among movement participants, I argue that organizational interests and shared beliefs play interrelated, but nonreducible roles in the construction of movement identity. Activists understand social reform as requiring competencies in a wide range of cultural and political venues. Focusing on specific forms of movement activity, or niches, organizations develop proficiencies that activists share as part of a collective effort in which each organization is seen as playing a necessary, but insufficient part. Rather than undermining a unified movement identity, then, organizational specialization is seen here as producing it.
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