Editorial Type:
Article Category: Research Article
 | Online Publication Date: 21 Feb 2006
Systematizing Research Findings on Collective Behavior and Social Movements
Systematizing Research Findings on Collective Behavior and Social Movements
Page Range: 1 – 20
If it is reasonable to think of collective behavior and social movement (CBSM) studies as the production, organization, and cumulation of research findings, why are there so few efforts to carry out the second and third of these tasks, those of organizing and cumulating findings? One answer is that very few CBSM scholars in fact think in such terms. Instead, many if not most order CBSM in terms of other principles and these principles compete among themselves and with the goals of systematizing and cumulating research findings. In this article, I explain six of these competing principles and contrast them with the goal of systematizing research findings. I then explain four strategic and six operational decisions faced by anyone who does want to organize and cumulate CBSM research.
Griffith, Belver, and Henry Small. 1983. "The Structure of the Social, and Behavioral Science Literature". Pp. 1-153 in Stockholm Papers in Library, and Information Science. S. Schwarz, ed. Stockholm: Royal Institute of Technical Libraries.
Hage, Jerald, ed. 1994. Formal Theory in Sociology: Opportunity or Pitfall? Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Hall, John R. 1988. "Social Organization, and Pathways of Commitment: Types of Communal Groups, Rational Choice Theory, and the Kanter Thesis." American Sociological Review 53: 679-692.
Gusfield, Joseph R. 1978. "Historical Problematics, and Sociological Fields: American Liberalism, and the Study of Social Movements." Pp. 121-149 in Research in Sociology of Knowledge, Sciences, and Art. R. A. Jones, ed. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Hamilton, David. 1991. "Research Papers: Who's Uncited Now?" Science 251 (January 4, No. 4989) : 25.
Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Bott, David, and Lowell Hargens. 1991. "Are Sociologists' Publications Uncited? Citation Rates of Articles, Chapters, and Books." American Sociologist 22 (2, Summer): 147-158.
Buechler, Steven, and Kurk Cylke, eds. 1997. Social Movements: Perspectives, and Issues. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
Committee on Social Movements, and Social Classes, International Sociological Association. 1996. [Conference on] Globalization, and Collective Action: Strategies, and Prospects for Oppositional Politics. History of Consciousness Board, University of California, Santa Cruz, May 17-19.
Cooper, Harris, and Larry V. Hedges, eds. 1994. Handbook of Research Synthesis. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Coughlin, Ellen K. 1994. How Rational is Rational Choice? Chronicle of Higher Education, December 7, A8-9, 16.
Cuba, Lee J. 1988. A Short Guide to Writing About Social Science. Dallas, TX: Harper Collins Publishers.
Curtis, Russell, and Benigno Aguirre, eds. 1993. Collective Behavior, and Social Movements. Boston, MA: Allyn, and Bacon.
Darnovsky, Marcy, Barbara Epstein, and Richard Flacks. 1995. "Introduction." Pp. vii-xxiii in Cultural Politics, and Social Movements. M. Darnovsky, B. Epstein, and R. Flacks, eds. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Freeman, Jo. 1983. "A Model for Analyzing the Strategic Options of Social Movements." Pp. 193-210 in Social Movement of the Sixties, and Seventies. J. Freeman, ed. New York,: Longman.
Frey, R. Scott, Thomas Dietz, and Linda Kalof. 1992. "Characteristics of Successful American Protest Groups: Another Look at Gamson's Strategy of Social Protest." American Journal of Sociology 98 (2) : 368-87.
Gamson, William. 1990. The Strategy of Social Protest, Second Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Garner, Roberta. 1996. Contemporary Movements, and Ideologies. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Goffman, Erving. 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients, and Other Inmates. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
Goode, Erich. 1992. Collective Behavior. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Goode, William, Elizabeth Hopkins, and Helen McClure. 1971. Social Systems, and Family Patterns: A Propositional Inventory. Indianapolis, ID: Bobbs-Merrill.
Green, Donald P., and Ian Shapiro. 1994. Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of Applications in Political Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Lieberson, Stanley. 1996. "The Big Broad Issues in Society, and Social History: Application of a Probabilistic Perspective." Pp. 1-45 in Causality in Crisis? Statistical Methods, and the Search for Causal Knowledge in the Social Sciences. V. McKim, and S. Turner, eds. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Lofland, John. 1993. "Theory-bashing, and Answer-Improving in the Study of Social Movements." American Sociologist 24 (2): 37-58.
Lofland, John. 1995. "Analytic Ethnography." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 24 (1) : 30-67.
Lofland, John. 1996. Social Movement Organizations: Guide to Research on Insurgent Realities. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
Lofland, John, and Lyn H. Lofland. 1995. Analyzing Social Settings, Third Edition: Guide to Qualitative Observation, and Analysis. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Lyman, Stanford M., ed. 1995. Social Movements: Critiques, Concepts, Case-Studies. New York: New York University Press.
Machalek, Richard, and David A. Snow. 1993. "Conversion to New Religious Movements." Religion, and the Social Order 3B : 53-74.
Marwell, Gerald, and Pamela Oliver. 1994. "Theory Is Not a Social Dilemma." Social Psychology Quarterly 57 (4): 373.
Marx, Gary, and James L. Wood. 1975. "Strands of Theory, and Research in Collective Behavior." Annual Review of Sociology 1 : 363-428.
Marwell, Gerald, and Pamela Oliver. 1984. "Collective Action Theory, and Social Movements Research." Pp. 1-27 in Research in Social Movements, Conflict, and Change, Louis Kriesberg, ed. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Hargens, Lowell L. 1991. "Impressions, and Misimpressions About Sociology Journals." Contemporary Sociology 20 (3): 343-349.
Hayakawa, S. I. 1978. Language in Thought, and Action: Fourth Edition. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Heberle, Rudolf. 1951. Social Movements: An Introduction to Political Sociology. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.
Hedstrom, Peter. 1996. "Review of Green, and Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice." Contemporary Sociology 25 (2): 278-279.
Hickman, Cleveland P., Larry S. Roberts, and Allan Larson. 1993. Integrated Principles of Zoology: Ninth Edition. St. Louis, MO: Mosby.
Jenkins, J. Craig. 1983. "Resource Mobilization Theory, and the Study of Social Movements." Annual Review of Sociology 9: 527-553.
Johnston, Hank. 1980. "The Marketed Social Movement: A Case Study of the Rapid Growth of TM." Pacific Sociological Review 23 (3): 333-354.
Kanter, Rosabeth M. 1972. Commitment, and Community: Communes, and Utopias in Sociological Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Klandermans, Bert, ed. 1989. Organizing for Change: Social Movement Organizations in Europe, and the United States. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press
Berelson, Bernard, and Gary Steiner. 1964. Human Behavior: An Inventory of Scientific Findings. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc.
Blumer, Herbert. 1957. "Collective Behavior." Pp. 127-158 In Review of Sociology: Analysis of a Decade. J. B. Gittler, ed. New York, NY: John Wiley.
Snow, David A., E. Burke Rochford, Steven Worden, and Robert Benford. 1986. "Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation." American Sociological Review 51: 464-81.
Sorokin, Pitirim. 1956. Fads, and Foibles in Modern Sociology, and Related Sciences. Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery.
Stowe, David W. 1995. "Just Do It: How to Beat the Copyright Racket." Linguafranca: The Review of Academic Life 6 (1, Nov./Dec.): 32-42.
Tarrow, Sidney. 1994. Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press
Tilly, Charles. 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Turner, Ralph H., and Lewis M. Killian. 1987. Collective Behavior, Third Edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Twayne, Publishers. n. d. [Brochure on the Book Series] Social Movements Past, and Present. New York, NY: Twayne Publishers.
Weitzman, Eben A., and Matthew B. Miles. 1995. Computer Programs for Qualitative Data Analysis: A Software Sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Wilson, John. 1973. An Introduction to Social Movements. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Morris, Aldon D., and Carol McClurg Mueller, eds. 1992. Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Zurcher, Louis A., and David A. Snow. 1981. "Collective Behavior: Social Movements." Pp. 447-482 in Social Psychology: Sociological Perspectives. M. Rosenberg, and R. Tuner, eds. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Morris, Aldon D., and Cedric Herring. 1987. "Theory, and Research in Social Movements: A Critical Review." Pp. 137-198 in Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 2. S. Long, ed. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Oliver, Pamela. 1996. Social Movements [An Annotated Bibliography]. Internet Home Page of the University of Wisconsin: American Sociological Association Section on Collective Behavior, and Social Movements.
Parsons, Talcott. 1949. The Structure of Social Action: A Study of Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press (First published by McGraw-Hill in 1937).
Rambo, Lewis R. 1993. Understanding Religious Conversion. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Rauch, Jonathan. 1993. Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Rothchild, Joyce, and Allen Whitt. 1986. The Cooperative Workplace: Potentials, and Dilemmas of Organizational Democracy, and Participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rule, James B. 1988. Theories of Civil Violence. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Seglen, Per. 1992. "The Skewness of Science." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 42(9): 628-638.
Smelser, Neil J. 1962. Theory of Collective Behavior. New York: The Free Press.
Snow, David A. 1979. "A Dramaturgical Analysis of Movement Accommodation: Building Idiosyncrasy Credit As a Movement Mobilization Strategy." Symbolic Interaction 2 (2): 23-44.
Snow, David A., and Richard Machalek. 1984. "The Sociology of Conversion." Annual Review of Sociology 10: 167-190.
Snow, David A., and Pamela E. Oliver. 1995. "Social Movements, and Collective Behavior: Social Psychological Dimensions, and Considerations." Pp. 571-599 in Sociological Perspectives on Social Psychology. Edited by K. Cook, G. A. Fine, and J. S. House, eds. Boston: Allyn, and Bacon.
Marx, Gary T., and Douglas McAdam. 1994. Collective Behavior, and Social Movements: Process, and Structure. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald. 1988. "Social Movements." Pp. 695-737 in Handbook of Sociology. N. J. Smelser, ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, eds. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
McAdam, Doug, and David Snow, eds. 1997. Social Movements: Readings on Their Emergence, Mobilization, and Dynamics. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury.
McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. 1996. "To Map Contentious Politics." Mobilization 1 (1): 17-34.
McPhail, Clark. 1991. The Myth of the Madding Crowd. New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
Lieberson, Stanley. 1992. "Einstein, Renoir, and Greeley: Evidence in Sociology." American Sociological Review 57 (1): 1-15.
Aguirre, B. E. 1977. "The Development of Propositional Inventories in the Social Sciences: Methodological Considerations." Columbus, Ohio: Disaster Research Center, Working Paper Number 67.
Amenta, Edwin, Yvonne Zylan. 1991. "It Happened Here: Political Opportunity, The New Institutionalism, and the Townsend Movement." American Sociological Review 56: 250-265.