WHEN SAYING LESS IS SOMETHING NEW: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND FRAME-CONTRACTION PROCESSES*
The framing strategies of social movements are typically characterized by movement actors conceptually and rhetorically expanding frames. We contend that movement actors also contract frames by deliberately excluding frame elements. We add the concept of contraction to the frame-alignment construct and show how frame contraction allows for enhanced theorizing about the dialectical and dynamic nature of social movements. We describe three distinct frame contraction processes, frame removal, frame minimization, and frame restriction, which characterize common frame contraction strategies. We illustrate frame contraction by examining the framing approaches used by the United Auto Workers as they bargained with automakers across two rounds of negotiations in 1945–46 and 1949–1950. We show how frame contraction articulates undertheorized complexities in changes to social movement frames. We also illustrate potential blind spots, biases, or distortions that may arise absent the frame contraction construct.
Contributor Notes
* We gratefully acknowledge the wisdom and support provided by Rory McVeigh, Neal Caren, and three anonymous reviewers. We also thank Jerry Davis for invaluable guidance as well as Matthew Bidwell, Forrest Briscoe, Maria Farkas, Bill Gamson, Flannery Garnett, Brayden King, Margaret Levenstein, David Levy, Heather MacIndoe, Mark Mizruchi, Maureen Scully, Kathie Sutcliffe, and Academy of Management conference participants for thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Additionally, we thank the staff of the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University for their assistance with the archival data. This research was financed in part by the Louis O. Kelso Fellowship, the Robert Kahn Fellowship for the Scientific Study of Social Issues, and the State Farm Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Award.
† Marc Lavine is an associate professor of management at the University of Massachusetts Boston. J. Adam Cobb is an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Christopher J. Roussin is academic and research director at Boston Children's Hospital Simulator Program and affiliated with the Harvard Medical School.