Editorial Type:
Article Category: Research Article
 | Online Publication Date: 21 Feb 2006
Creating Transnational Solidarity: The Use of Narrative in the U.S.-Central America Peace Movement
Creating Transnational Solidarity: The Use of Narrative in the U.S.-Central America Peace Movement
Page Range: 21 – 36
As social problems become increasingly global, activists are working across state boundaries and forming transnational social movements. However, there is little information that illuminates how groups are able to overcome ethnic, class, ideological and cultural differences that could be obstacles to collaboration. Through an analysis of the story of Salvadoran martyr Archbishop Romero, I demonstrate how this narrative fostered solidarity between the progressive Central American church and U.S. Christians. By symbolically mirroring the social ontology of Christianity and melodramatically presenting the Salvadoran conflict with moral clarity, Romero's life story facilitated the construction of a transnational collective identity and provided a model of action. The moral credibility of the narrators, and the context in which Romero's story was told, influenced many Christians' decision to prioritize this religious identity over their national allegiance.
McAdam, Doug. 1982. Political Process, and the Development of the Black Insurgency, 1930-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer Zald. 1996. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Meyer, David, and Sidney Tarrow. 1998. The Social Movement Society: Contentious Politics for a New Century. Boulder: Rowman, and Littlefield.
Meyer, John W., David John Frank, Ann Hironaka, and Evan Schofer. 1994. "The Rise of an Environmental Sector in World Society." Paper supported by a grant from The National Science Foundation (SES9213258).
Borgatti, S.P., M.G. Everett, and L.C. Freeman. 1992. UCINET IV VERSION 1.0. Columbia: Analytic Technologies.
Buechler, Steven. 1996. "New Social Movement Theories." In Social Movements:Perspectives, and Issues. Mountainview, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.
Calhoun, Craig, Marshall W. Meyer, and W. Richard Scott. 1990. Structures of Power, and Constraint. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Caniglia, Beth Schaefer. 2000. Do Elite Alliances Matter? Structural Power in the Environmental TSMO Network. Doctoral Dissertation; University of Notre Dame.
Boutrous-Ghali, Boutrous. 1996. "Forward." Pp. 7-12 in NGOs, The UN, and Global Governance, Thomas G. Weiss, and Leon Gordenker, eds. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Collins, Randall. 1979. The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education, and Stratification. New York: Academic Press.
Diani, Mario. 1995. Green Networks: A Structural Analysis of the Italian Environmental Movement. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Fernandez, Roberto, and Roger V. Gould. 1994. "A Dilemma of State Power: Brokerage, and Influence in the National Health Policy Domain." American Journal of Sociology 99(6): 1455-91.
Freeman, Linton C. 1979. "Centrality in Social Networks: Conceptual Clarification." Social Networks 1: 215-239.
Gale, Richard. 1986. "Social Movements, and the State: The Environmental Movement, Countermovement, and Government Agencies." Sociological Perspectives 29(2): 202-240.
Edwards, Bob, and Sam Marullo. 1995. "Organizational Mortality in a Declining Social Movement: The Demise of Peace Movement Organizations in the End of the Cold War Era." American Sociological Review 60 (December): 908-927.
Edwards, Michael, and David Hulme, eds. 1996. Beyond the Magic Bullet: NGO Performance, and Accountability in the Post-Cold War World. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
Eisenger, Peter K. 1973. "Conditions of Protest Behavior in American Cities." American Political Science Review 67:11-28.
Diani, Mario. 2000. "Mobilization Forum: The Relational Deficit of Ideologically Structured Action." Mobilization 5(1): 17-24.
Donini, Antonio. 1996. "The Bureaucracy, and the Free Spirits: Stagnation, and Innovation in the Relationship Between the UN, and NGOs." Pp. 83-102 in NGOs, The UN, and Global Governance, Thomas G. Weiss, and Leon Gordenker, eds. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Gould, Roger V., and Roberto M. Fernandez. 1989. "Structures of Mediation: A Formal Approach to Brokerage in Transaction Networks." Sociological Methodology19: 89-126.
Haas, Peter, ed. 1992. "Knowledge, Power, and International Policy Coordination." International Organization 46 (Winter, 1992).
Higley, John, and Richard Gunther. 1992. Elites, and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America, and Southern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jenkins, Craig J., and Charles Perrow. 1977. "Insurgency of the Powerless: Farm Worker Movements (1946-1972)." American Sociological Review 42: 249-68.
Jenkins, Craig J., and Craig Eckert. 1986. "Channeling the Black Insurgency: Elite Patronage, and the Development of the Civil Rights Movement." American Sociological Review 51: 812-30.
Keck, Margaret, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. Activists Beyond Borders: Transnational Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ootheca: Cornell University Press.
Klandermans, Bert. 2000. "Must We Redefine Social Movements as Ideologically Structured Action?" Mobilization 5(1): 25-30.
Knoke, David. 1990. Political Networks: The Structural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge Press.
Marsden, Peter. 1990. "Network Data, and Measurement." American Sociological Review 16: 435-63.
Willetts, Peter. 1996. The Conscience of the World. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.
Knoke, David, and Edward O. Laumann. 1982. "The Social Organization of National Policy Domains." Social Structure, and Network Analysis, Peter Marsden, and Nan Lin eds. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Knoke, David, and James H. Kuklinski. 1982. Network Analysis. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Kriesi, Hanspeter. 1989. "New Social Movements, and the New Class in the Netherlands." American Journal of Sociology 94:1078-1116.
Laumann, Edward O., and David Knoke. 1987. The Organizational State. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Lipsky, Michael. 1968. "Protest as a Political Resource." American Political Science Review 62 (December): 1144-58.
Laumann, Edward O., Peter V. Marsden, and David Prensky, eds. 1983. "The Boundary Specification Problem in Network Analysis." In Applied Network Analysis. Burt, Ronald S., and Michael J. Minor, eds. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Parsons, Talcott. 1970. "Equality, and Inequality in Modern Society, or Social Stratification Revisited." Pp. 14-72 in Social Stratification, and Theory for the 1970s. Edward O. Laumann, ed. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Zald, Mayer N., and John D. McCarthy. 1987. Social Movements in an Organizational Society. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Boli, John, and George M. Thomas. 1997. "World Culture in the World Polity: A Century of International Non-Governmental Organization." Annual Sociological Review 62): 171-190.
Pfeffer, Jeffrey. 1978. "Who Governs?" Pp. 1-30 in The Sociology of Organizations: Basic Studies, Second edition, Oscar Grusky, and George A. Miller, eds. New York: The Free Press.
Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard A. Cloward. 1977. Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail. New York: Vintage Books.
Putnam, Robert. 1976. The Comparative Study of Political Elites. Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Risse-Kappen, Thomas. 1994. "Ideas Do Not Float Freely: Transnational Coalitions, Domestic Structures, and The End of The Cold War." International Organization 48(2): 185-214.
Sikkink, Katherine. 1993. "Human Rights, Principled Issue-Networks, and Sovereignty in Latin America." International Organization 47(3): 411-441.
Rosenau, James N. 1993. "Environmental Challenges in a Global Context," Pp. 257-274 in Environmental Politics in the International Arena: Movements, Parties, Organizations, and Policy, Sheldon Kamieniecki, eds. New York: State University of New York Press.
Rosenau, James N. 1993. "Environmental Challenges in a Turbulent World." Pp. 71-93 in The State, and Social Power in Global Environmental Politics, Ronnie Lipschutz, and Ken Conca, eds. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rucht, Dieter. 1996. "The Impacts of National Contexts on Social Movement Structures: A Cross-Movement, and Cross-National Comparison." Pp. 185-204 in Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, Doud McAdam, John McCarthy, and Mayer Zald, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, Jackie. 1997. "Characteristics of the Modern Transnational Social Movement Sector." Pp. 42-58 in Transnational Social Movements, and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State, Jackie Smith, Charles Chatfield, and Ron Pagnucco, eds. New York: Syracuse University Press.
Smith, Jackie, Charles Chatfield, and Ron Pagnucco, eds. 1997. Transnational Social Movements, and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State. New York: Syracuse University Press.
Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1965. "Social Structure, and Organizations." Pp. 142-93 in Handbook of Organizations, James March, ed. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Tarrow, Sidney. 1988. "National Politics, and Collective Action: Recent Theory, and Research in Western Europe, and the United States." Annual Review of Sociology 14:421-40.
Taylor, Verta, and Nancy E. Whittier. 1996. "Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobilization." In Social Movements: Perspectives, and Issues. Mountainview, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company.
Tilly, Charles. 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison Wesley.
Union of International Associations (UAI). 1993. Yearbook of International Associations. Munich, Germany: K.G. Saur.
Wasserman, Stanley, and Katherine Faust. 1994. Social Network Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weber, Max. 1947. The Theory of Social, and Economic Organizations. New York: Oxford University Press.
Weiss, Thomas G., and Leon Gordenker, eds. 1996. NGOs, The UN, & Global Governance. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996.
Zald, Mayer N., and John D. McCarthy. 2000. "Ideologically Structured Action: An Enlarged Agenda for Social Movement Research." Mobilization 5(1): 1-16.
Aldrich, Howard, and David A. Whetten. 1981. "Organization-sets, Action-sets, and Networks: Making the Most of Simplicity." Pp. 385-408 in Handbook of Organizational Design, Paul C. Nystrom, and William H. Starbuck, eds. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Blau, Peter M. 1981 [1965]. "The Comparative Study of Organizations." Pp. 110-128 in The Sociology of Organizations, Oscar Grusky, and George A. Miller, eds. New York: The Free Press.
Neidhardt, Friedhelm, and Dieter Rucht. 1993. "Auf dem Weg in die Bewegungsgesellshaft? Uber die Stabilisterbarkeit sozialer Bewegungen." Sozialer Welt 44: 305-326.
Nelkin, Dorothy, and Pollak, M. 1982. The Atom Besieged: Extraparliamentary Dissent in France, and Germany. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Smith, Jackie, Ron Pagnucco, and Winnie Romeril. 1994. "Transnational Social Movement Organizations in the Global Political Arena." Voluntas 5(2):121-154.