Public Argument Action Research
and the Learning
Curve of New Social Movements
Gordon R. Mitchell
Argumentation and
Advocacy 40 (Spring 2004): 209-225
Abstract
Alain Touraine’s method of social movement action
research holds promise as a theoretical exemplar for public argument
scholarship motivated by the “activist” or
“ideological” turn in rhetorical criticism. Touraine’s
sociological approach generates analytical insight and political traction from
the synergistic coupling of academic critique with intervention into fields of
public argument. Efforts to hitch Touraine’s method of action research to
public argument scholarship stand to enrich study of “new social
movements,” which exhibit a similar tendency to learn by cycling
iteratively between grass roots consciousness raising and public sphere
argumentation. Key words: Alain Touraine, public argument, social movements,
rhetoric, Kembrew McLeod.
Some rhetoricians
call for a redoubled emphasis on the public argument dimensions of scholarly
inquiry, recommending an “activist turn” in criticism (Andersen,
1993). The various trajectories of such a path range from pursuit of
“opportunities for dialogue with alternative audiences” (Hollihan,
1994, p. 233), to “taking our models and signifiers off the
blackboard” (Farrell, 1993, p. 156), to “enter[ing] the fray
outside the Ivory Tower” (Andersen, 1993, p. 249).
Eschewing the
“view from nowhere” (Nagel, 1986) epistemological standpoint, these
scholars advocate criticism that reaches beyond specialized academic audiences
to engage publics and contribute to “broader social dialogues”
(Hollihan, 1994, p. 234; see also Sholle, 1994; Shotter, 1995). An illuminating
example of this mode of intellectual engagement is the work of media critic
Kembrew McLeod. In addition to publishing authoritative commentary on
intellectual property law in scholarly outlets (McLeod, 2001, 2002), McLeod is
adept at fashioning parallel arguments for circulation in wider public spheres of
deliberation. Two recent interventions by this University of Iowa professor of
communication studies include his successful attempt to secure an official U.S.
trademark of the phrase “freedom of expression” (McLeod, 2003a,
2003b) and his participation in “Grey Tuesday,” an online
“day of civil disobedience” organized to resist the “music
industry’s copyright cartel” (Werde, 2004). McLeod’s oeuvre
warrants further consideration, since this mode of scholarship sheds light on a
persistent theoretical problem facing rhetorical study of social movements
– the difficulty in locating essentially rhetorical features of movement
activity.
David Zarefsky
identifies “theoretical” work in social movement studies as
scholarship where “the scholar seeks to make generalizable claims about
patterns of persuasion characteristic of social movements as a class”
(1980, p. 245; see also Riches & Sillars, 1980). This theoretical approach
aims to establish characteristics of a distinctive rhetorical genre of social movement
rhetoric (see Griffin, 1952; Cathcart, 1972; and Simons, Mechling &
Scheier, 1984). According to Zarefsky (1980), many efforts fall short of
establishing a unique genre of social movement rhetoric, because they fail to
isolate essential rhetorical differences that distinguish social movements from
other types of collective communicative action such as top-down government
propaganda or institutional public relations campaigns (Warnick, 1977; Simons,
1991). This objection presents a serious challenge to those social movement
scholars who view the issue of rhetorical uniqueness as a sort of litmus test
that determines rhetoric’s analytical utility (Cathcart, 1972). However,
behind this “where is the rhetoric in social movements” litmus
test, there lurks a different, and possibly timelier question of contemporary
salience: where is the social movement in rhetorical criticism?
Traditionally,
“historical” criticisms of social movements in the field of
communication have largely deferred this question (see e.g. Andrews, 1973;
Lucas, 1976). These efforts have sought to add depth to historical accounts of
social change by illuminating retrospectively the rhetorical dimensions of past
movement activity. As purely academic exercises, such work has played out on a
plane removed from the level of social movement mobilization. In contrast,
action research seeks to connect scholarship directly to ongoing struggles,
opening up extra-academic channels for intervention into live arenas of public
argument (Kemmis, 1993).
While
this action research process can be enriched by appropriation of select
theoretical terms and concepts developed previously in rhetorical work on
social movements, it also stands to gain from studies in other fields that have
already jumped the walls of the Ivory Tower. This essay uses such inter-field
cross-fertilization to pursue a method for study of social movements that
highlights reflexivity and engagement with actors beyond academic peer
audiences. Part one discusses the importance of Robert Cathcart’s theory
of “dialectical enjoinment” and Richard Gregg’s theory of the
“ego-function” of protest rhetoric. Alain Touraine’s
“action sociology” is considered as a theoretical exemplar for
rhetorical action research in part two. Part three’s focus the pedagogical
mechanisms of “new social movement” mobilization sets up the final
section’s closing reflections on how the similar learning curves of
action research and new social movement mobilization mark promising routes of
intellectual and political work.
Dialectical Enjoinment, Counter-Rhetoric
and the Ego-Function of Collective Protest
Social movement activists make arguments that call for change in the
established order. Frequently, activists seek to publicize such arguments in
order to expand the terrain of discourse. With movements trading on the
currency of public argument in this fashion, it is illuminating to view social
movement protest activity through the lens of public argument scholarship. This
is not a new insight – the promise of a dialogically interactive approach
to the study of social movements was a major theme voiced in early calls to
establish this line of research in the field of communication.
When Griffin (1952)
called for heightened attention to social movements as rhetorical phenomena, he
expanded fruitfully the field of rhetorical criticism beyond its single text,
public address orientation and sparked a host of new critical possibilities
(Henry & Jensen, 1991). Some of these possibilities were realized in the
work on social movements that immediately followed in Griffin’s wake. But
by the mid-1980s, skeptics contended that rhetorical study of social movements
was bogged down in definitional questions, with the painstaking search for a
unique genre of rhetoric called “social movement protest” crowding
out more useful theoretical work (see Zarefsky, 1980).
However, this skepticism
should not obscure the fact that these early works contain valuable insight
that does not deserve to be thrown out with the genre bathwater. For example,
Cathcart’s concepts of “dialectical enjoinment” and
“counter rhetoric” provide useful accounts of the symbolic
dimension of social movement activity, and Gregg’s explanation of the
identity constitutive function of movement rhetoric and establishment
counter-rhetoric give illuminating perspectives on the interplay between
institutional politics and identity formation in social movement protest. By
considering each of these concepts in more detail, it is possible to retrieve
tools from early rhetorical theory that can productively inform contemporary
efforts to study social movements using an action research method.
Cathcart suggests that it
is not possible to evaluate effectively social movements outside the context of
their “dialectical enjoinment” with establishment interlocutors.
The element that makes a social movement, according to Cathcart, is the
establishment’s “reciprocating act” in providing a response
to the movement’s symbolic challenge to the existing order. Through
analysis of the abolition and women’s suffrage movements, Cathcart (1972,
pp. 87-88) illustrates how the dialectical interplay between movement and
establishment is the rhetorical sine qua non of social movement
activity. This approach highlights the fact that social movement discourse is not
a unitary textual phenomenon, but is instead an inter-textual dynamic emerging
out of confrontations similar to what G. Thomas Goodnight (1991) calls
“public controversies.” Goodnight’s theory of controversy
lends analytical depth to Cathcart’s notion of dialectical enjoinment.
According to Goodnight (1991, p. 5), controversy develops when interlocutors
engage in argumentation over “the taken for granted relationships between
communication and reasoning. . . . When unspoken rules and tacit presumptions are
put up for discussion through clashes among members of institutions, interest
groups, fields, communities, and publics, there are new opportunities and
obligations to learn, to decide, and to argue.” The moments of
controversy embedded in movement-establishment dialectical enjoinments may
indeed yield rich arrays of communicative phenomena for rhetorical critique.
Consider “Grey
Tuesday,” a day of “coordinated civil disobedience” organized
in cyberspace. On 24 February 2004, over 150 Internet website hosts made
available, for free downloading, copies of a music recording entitled The
Grey Album. Artist DJ Danger Mouse created the The Grey Album by
mixing together tracks from two original recordings – The Beatles’ The
White Album and Jay-Z’s The
Black Album. Critics lauded The Grey Album as “an ingenious
hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time” (Gitlin, 2004) and
the “most creatively captivating album of the year” (Graham, 2004).
EMI executives disagreed. They sought to squelch distribution of The Grey
Album on the grounds that such circulation infringed on their copyright
ownership of the Beatles’ rhythm tracks.
McLeod hosts
<www.kembrew.com>, one of the websites that participated in the Grey
Tuesday protest. During that protest, thousands of Internet surfers downloaded
electronic copies of The Grey Album. Shortly thereafter, EMI’s
lawyers served McLeod a letter demanding that he “cease and desist from the actual or intended distribution, reproduction,
public performance or other exploitation of The Grey Album”
(Jensen, 2004). Here was a concrete example of “dialectical
enjoinment.”
McLeod joined a collective
protest and used the establishment’s reply to leverage his own public
argument. His response to EMI’s cease and desist order (McLeod, 2004) illustrated
how Cathcart’s notion of dialectical enjoinment and Goodnight’s
theory of public controversy illuminate the role of public argumentation in
social movement protest. McLeod capitalized on the exchange to spur public
debate about the “broken” copyright regime: “It is in the spirit of promoting conversation and debate
about an illegal artwork (and a broken copyright regime) that I have engaged in
this act of copyright civil disobedience” (McLeod, 2004). EMI’s
dialectical enjoinment presented an opportunity for McLeod to issue a rebuttal
that broadened the public argument. What began as an isolated dispute regarding
distribution of a single music recording fanned out into a public controversy
over the rules for public exchange of information codified in U.S. copyright
law. McLeod parlayed the public attention stemming from EMI’s cease and
desist order into a public platform to amplify several lines of argument he had
honed previously in scholarly research.
The enduring salience of
early social movement scholarship is apparent in another context – the
identity-constitutive dimension of protest activity. Efforts to persuade others
of the rightness of a given a viewpoint not only affect addressed audiences;
such efforts also have important effects on speakers themselves. This is
evident in collective political struggles, where rhetors form and express
shared senses of identity through social movement mobilization. Gregg (1971)
suggests that this “ego-function” of rhetoric is a particularly important
aspect of social movement activity.
Working through examples of
the Black power, student, and women’s liberation movements, Gregg
elucidates the process through which social movement actors develop distinctive
notions of selfhood during acts of collective protest (see also Stewart, 1991;
Loeb, 1999). In the case of the Black power movement, Gregg argues that the
foil of a demonized “Whitey” served as a symbol of the negative
aspects of Black identity that were aired through dissent. For the student movement,
sterile and bureaucratic idealizations of “the system” and
“the power structure” served as constructs that grounded the
students’ own feelings as victims of oppression. Similarly, women’s
liberation activists built common notions of identification by challenging
prevailing stereotypes of the “typical, domiciled woman” (Gregg,
1971, p. 80).
According to Gregg, these
foils not only served as rallying points spurring movements to political
success; they also provided important reference points for the development of
shared notions of group identity: “By painting the enemy in dark hued
imagery of vice, corruption, evil, and weakness, one may more easily convince
himself [sic] of his [sic] own superior virtue and thereby gain the symbolic
victory of ego-enhancement. The rhetoric of attack becomes at the same time
rhetoric of ego-building, and the very act of assuming such a rhetorical stance
becomes self-persuasive and confirmatory” (Gregg, 1971, p. 82).
Gregg’s theory of the
ego-function of protest rhetoric has notable limitations (see Campbell, 1973;
Lake, 1983). With a nearly exclusive emphasis on the importance of demonization
of the other as an identity formation mechanism in social movement rhetoric,
Gregg glosses over the possibility that collective identity can be constituted
through more positive and constructive ways such as aesthetic performance (e.g.
the AIDS quilt project), collective sacrifice for the achievement of
instrumental goals (e.g. Habitat for Humanity building construction), or
experimentation with novel modes of public engagement (e.g. Rosa Eberly’s
“citizen critic” pedagogy). In the latter case, Eberly (2000, p.
170) shows how classroom assignments that invite students to engage local
public spheres of deliberation are “possible means of getting students to
begin to imagine themselves as participants in local public discourse.”
This identity-constitutive project aims to cultivate what Michael Warner (2002,
p. 95) calls “reflexive circulation” of public arguments: “I
don’t just speak to you; I speak to the public in a way that enters a
cross-citational field of many other people speaking to the public.”
Another limitation of
Gregg’s theory is that by attributing a monolithic and static collective
identity to each of the movements he scrutinizes, Gregg overlooks the subtlety
of hybridized social identities, as well as the possibility that some movement
adherents may eschew their group’s collective identity constructions
(Butler, 1990; Wiley, 1994).
Despite these shortcomings,
Gregg’s theory serves a useful function in underscoring the thinness of
accounts that explain social movement discourse purely in instrumental terms,
where sole attention is paid to the question of how such discourse contributes
to or detracts from the movement’s institutional reform agenda (Lake,
1983).
The reconstruction of early
social movement theory foregrounds some basic contours of a public
argument-centered action research approach to movement study. This approach can
be developed further by drawing on work in sociology that uses an action
research method to both analyze and transform its object of analysis.
Touraine’s Action Sociology
Most early rhetorical studies of social
movements lacked reflexivity, in the sense that scholars did not turn the
theoretical tools they used to explain collective protest activity back on
themselves to illuminate the status of their own scholarship. For example, one
might wonder about the ego-function of Gregg’s own scholarly prose
– how did the expression of his ideas through a journal article shape his
own self-identity as a political actor? Or, in a similarly reflexive light, one
might ponder the ways in which Cathcart’s academic publications affected
the character of dialectical enjoinments between social movements and
establishment rhetors that were unfolding at the time his work appeared in the
journal Western Speech. The
lurking question posed at the outset of this essay returns: Where is the social
movement in this kind of criticism?
It may be easier to come to
grips with this question after revisiting Michael McGee’s (1980)
distinction between social movement as “phenomenon” and social
movement as “meaning.” According to McGee, scholars study movements
as phenomena when they explain collective protest activity by focusing on how
movements operate as things. Such approaches elucidate for example, how
activists recruit members, organize events, invent messages and plot strategy.
In contrast, studies of social movement as “meaning” look to the
ways in which a variety of communicative phenomena, including but not limited
to collective protest activity, change – or “move” –
prevailing social norms and key terms of public discourse through time.
McGee’s
framework provides a useful backdrop for pondering once more the question:
Where is the social movement in rhetorical criticism of social movements? If
critique remains confined to publication of articles in specialized academic
journals, the answer to this question will often be that there is little
significant social movement to be found. By deferring the issue of reflexivity,
critics default to the position of detached interpreters of texts, situating
themselves as purely academic actors who “must alienate him/herself from
his/her own involvement in the act . . . The result has been a criticism that
seems sterile” (Klumpp & Hollihan, 1989, p. 92). In a similar light,
Peter Andersen notes, “It would be hard to write an ideological critique
of Operation Desert Storm, the federal budget deficit, or the politics of
logging, and not feel a need to do more than produce a scholarly article. If,
armed with key insights into political doublespeak, establishment rhetoric, or
movement brainwashing, we engage in such criticism only in scholarly outlets,
he would be accused correctly of hiding in the Ivory Tower” (Andersen,
1993, pp. 248-49; see also Eberly, 2000; Wander, 1983).
French sociologist Alain
Touraine has developed a method for studying social movements that places this
issue of reflexivity front and center. Touraine (1978/1981, pp. 141-42),
originator of the phrase “post-industrial society,” strives to
“invent a method for the study of social movements by abandoning their
representation of society as a body of functions and rules, techniques and
responses to environmental demands, and by replacing it with the image of a
society working upon itself.”
Academic scholars
occupy an important site in society, Touraine suggests, because they enjoy
unique opportunities to act upon their own self-identities and to alter the
tenor of social struggle and society. This is especially true for students:
“Students can now play an important role because the sharp rise in their
number and the increased duration of studies have resulted in the constitution
of student collectivities within their own space, capable of opposing the
resistance of their own culture and of their personal concerns to the space of
a large organizations that seek to impose themselves even more directly upon
them” (Touraine, 1984/1988, p. 120). Building on this reflexive awareness,
Touraine (1978/1981, p. 142) prescribes an engaged method of research where the
first move “is to enter into a relationship with the social movement
itself. We cannot remain contented merely with studying actions or thoughts; we
must come face-to-face with the social movement.”
Once engaged in this
manner, Touraine (1978/1981, p. 149) suggests that the “purpose of this
research work is to contribute to development of social movements. . . .
Our real objective is to enable society to live at the highest possible level
of historical action instead of blindly passing through crises and
conflicts.” Achievement of this objective requires successful
“conversion” of the status of collective action from defensive
“struggle” to “new social movement” (Touraine,
1984/1988, pp. 95-97). Whereas struggles are reactive measures undertaken by
collectivities facing immediate deprivations of basic needs or threats to their
well-being, new social movement activity entails collective
“counter-offensive” efforts that seek to restructure fundamentally
power relations, communicative norms and social practices in post-industrial
society.
In the case of French
anti-nuclear protest activity, citizens engaged in scattered and isolated
attempts to block construction of nuclear power plants in their local
communities in the mid-1970s. Motivated by fear of genetic damage and
catastrophic pollution, these groups initiated defensive, reactive struggles to
protect themselves. However, in Touraine’s analysis, the circumscribed
“not in my backyard” telos of these anti-nuclear struggles
prevented the activists from elevating their protest activity to the level of
new social movement resistance. Some pockets of resistance fought gamely, but
then dissipated quickly after their show of solidarity convinced French
government officials to withdraw plans for power plant construction in the
communities where such struggles were based. Weaker protest groups that were
overwhelmed by the nuclear industry’s political momentum met a similar fate
when they demobilized following defeat and commencement of plant construction
in their neighborhoods.
Sensing that collective
action of the anti-nuclear protestors carried the latent but untapped energy of
a new social movement, Touraine and his colleagues intervened into the field of
social action from 1976 to 1979. They sought to convert the scattered
anti-nuclear struggles into a broader joint challenge to technocratic
domination of French society, by clarifying the fundamental stakes involved in
protest against nuclear power plant construction. In Touraine’s view,
these stakes included the character of national energy policy and the hegemonic
concentration of power in the hands of a strictly hierarchical and centralized
authority charged with administering the state nuclear power program (Touraine,
1980/1983, pp. 1-13). The anti-nuclear struggle “still sometimes calls
for an uprising against the specific dangers of nuclear power, but, as we know,
these campaigns in the name of danger and fear are dying out and the struggle
is learning to name its real adversary: not nuclear energy or plutonium but the
nuclear policy and the technocratic power which decides it”
(Touraine, 1980/1983, p. 194, emphasis in original).
Touraine’s
intervention was carried out by two distinct groups of sociologists who formed
connections with anti-nuclear protest groups including RAT (Network of the
Friends of the Earth), GSIEN (Grouping of Scientists for Information on Nuclear
Energy), CFDT (a trade union), the Gazette Nucleaire (a leftist
newspaper) and militant students from the Malville Committee in Grenoble
(Touraine, 1980/1983, p. 11). The two camps of sociologists deliberately
adopted different orientations toward this protest network. On the one hand, an
“agitator” group moved into close, direct contact with the
protestors and helped to “prepare the confrontations, conduct the
[intervention] sessions, and above all help the group by
‘agitating’ it, i.e. by pressing it to define its positions
clearly, by pushing it to the limit in its discussions, and by reintroducing
certain of the group’s earlier statements or reactions” (Touraine,
1978/1981, pp. 192-93). On the other hand, an “analyst” group
operated at a more abstract and removed level, seeking to “criticize the
struggle,” using theoretical reflection to rethink and reformulate the
cultural stakes in play and to develop appropriate strategies of conversion to
be carried out by the agitator group (Touraine, 1978/1981, p. 193). One example
of a strategy developed by the analyst group, and carried out by the agitator
group, involved the drafting and circulation of a national petition calling for
public debate on the nuclear power question. This document provides a useful
working illustration of Touraine’s strategy of naming the broader
cultural and social stakes under contestation as a device to facilitate
conversion from struggle to new social movement (see Touraine, 1980/1983, p.
168).
Touraine (1984/1988, pp.
140-53) argues that by entering into a heuristic, ongoing dialogue with collective
actors already engaged in arenas of social action, academics have the capacity
to contribute to the positive evolution of “programmed”
postindustrial society. This contribution is made by following a method that
involves “to-ing and fro-ing between analysis and action,” as
agitator and analyst groups engage in a three-way conversation with activists
(Touraine, 1978/1981, p. 155). Touraine has followed this method of
“sociological intervention” in studying not only the French anti-nuclear
protest, but also by intervening into the French student uprising in the late
1960s (Touraine, 1971/1979), as well as the Polish Solidarity movement in the
early 1980s (Touraine, 1983/1984, 1996, 2000; see also Dubet & Wieviorka,
1996; Oommen, 1996). Striving to elevate each of these struggles to their
“highest level of meaning,” Touraine aimed to energize the
protestors’ identity as social actors, as well as to elucidate the
broader historical stakes implicated in their struggles.
Commenting on the English
translation of Touraine’s (1984/1988) book, Return of the Actor,
Stanley Aronowitz suggests that wide circulation of Touraine’s method
should be undertaken, given the present need for clear voices in the academy to
enrich the simmering discussion about the political and social role of
intellectuals and society: “The appearance in English of Return of the
Actor can contribute to the revival of American social theory, since it
comes at a time when the question of historical agency remains one of the
massive conundra of social sciences that have either denied its existence or
desperately clung to older essentialist models” (Aronowitz, 1988, p.
viii). Proposals for ideological and activist turns in the field of
communication signal that the political status of criticism is both a live
concern as well as a salient topic for theoretical discussion (see Brouwer
& Squires, 2003; Cloud, 1998; and Wander & Jaehne, 2000).
Touraine’s action sociology method may lend rhetorical critics important
insights about new ways to cultivate their own agency and position themselves
vis-à-vis other social actors in a fashion that maximizes the
transformative potential of their intellectual work.
How New Social Movements Learn
Early rhetorical study of social movements exhibited a preoccupation
with issues of generic definition and classification. Today, a variant of this
preoccupation has resurfaced in other fields, in the form of theoretical
debates over the apparent evolution of new collective actors called “new
social movements.” Some suggest that the defining feature of “new
social movements” is a dialectical “dual orientation,” where
the differentiated yet complementary tasks of local, grass roots consciousness
raising and institutional political action are both included in the movement’s
agenda and operate hand-in-hand to spur progressive change in public and
private spheres (Cohen, 1985; Cohen & Arato, 1992, pp. 549-50; Felski,
1989, pp. 167-168; and Habermas, 1992/1996, p. 370). These “new”
movements differ from “old” labor movements that pressed for
incremental reforms through institutional channels and relied primarily on
instrumental modes of communicative action such as collective bargaining (Eder,
1985; Melucci, 1985; Offe, 1985; and Touraine, 1985; but see Plotke, 1995; and
Tilly, 1988).
The feminist movement is
often cited as the prototypical new social movement, in which local efforts
such as grass roots consciousness raising not only jibe with, but reinforce
more traditional forms of collective action such as party politics: “The
dual logic of feminist politics thus involves a communicative discursive
politics of identity and influence that targets civil and political society and
an organized, strategically rational politics of inclusion and reform that is
aimed at political and economic institutions. Indeed almost all major analyses
of the feminist movement (in the United States and Europe) have shown the
existence and importance of dualistic politics” (Cohen & Arato, 1992,
p. 550).
Feminist activists seek
material gains on institutional levels (e.g. equal political representation and
legislative protections against employment discrimination), but also complement
these strategies with more localized efforts to shape their identities through
grass roots consciousness raising. The interplay between these two levels of
movement activity typifies the new social movement approach. By making
impressive appearances in the public realm, feminists build respect and gain
confidence as they push for transformation of patriarchal institutions. The
positive gains in collective identity emerging from these joint efforts are in
turn put to use in localized contexts, where individuals challenge patriarchal
attitudes that have been woven into the discursive fabric of the life-world. In
the other direction, as public mobilization builds collective identity, grass
roots identity politics lends momentum to public mobilization. In discussing
the feminist movement’s striking record of success in institutional
politics during the 1970s, Cohen and Arato (1992, pp. 552-53) observe,
“these political and legal successes had as their prerequisite and
precondition success in the cultural sense – in the prior spread of
feminist consciousness.”
New social movements use
the synergy of this “Janus faced politics” to push for social
change at multiple levels of society (Habermas, 1992/1996, p. 370). Cohen and
Arato account for this momentum by explaining the synergistic interaction
between modes of movement engagement as a learning process, a kind of
collective critical pedagogy. In contrast to the traditional “stage
model” that charts social movement evolution in a linear path from grass
roots consciousness raising to institutional lobbying (see e.g. Griffin, 1952),
Cohen and Arato suggest that new social movements zigzag between these two
foci, with the oscillation triggering collective learning processes that enable
movements to maintain a diverse repertoire of strategies that can be deployed
flexibly.
It is a virtue of the stage model to have called
attention to the fact that social movements target both civil and political
society. The model is misleading, however, to the extent that it presents these
orientations in either/or terms and describes the normal trajectory of
collective action as a linear movement from civil to political society. . . .
[The model] works with an overly simple conception of learning. Collective
actors are assumed to learn only along the cognitive-instrumental dimension.
That is, their learning is defined as a gradual recognition that identity-oriented,
symbolic politics cannot help them to achieve their goals, and the result of
this learning is a shift to a disciplined, hierarchical organization and an
instrumental-strategic model of action. This point of view implies the notion
that social movements cannot simultaneously concentrate on strategic
requirements and identity building. . . . In opposition to this view. . . [t]he
newness of the new movements in this respect lies not so much in their dualism
as in their more emphatic thematization of this dualism. (Cohen & Arato,
1992, p. 560)
Robert Michels’
famous “Iron Law of Oligarchy” posits that all collective actors
face the perennial dilemma that victories at the level of institutional politics
necessarily take on a phyrric quality, as success leads to co-optation,
bureaucratization, professionalization, and dilution of the original aims which
motivated collective action in the first place (Michels, 1915/1959, pp.
388-92). This so-called Michelsian dilemma (see Cohen & Arato, 1992, p.
557) was presupposed in early rhetorical theories of social movements, which
defined movement activity as essentially oppositional (e.g. Cathcart,
1972), so that the inclusion of movement adherents into institutional
structures would, by definition, bring an end to the movement.
However Cohen and Arato
(1992, p. 561) see a plausible way out of the Michelsian dilemma in the
collective critical pedagogy of the new social movements. By shifting back and
forth between the terrain of institutional politics and civil society, new
social movements invent modes of action that can be tailored specifically to
skirt the two horns of the dilemma – co-option, on one side, and
political marginalization, on the other (see also Cohen, 1996, pp. 199-204).
This process bears a
similarity to the “to-ing and fro-ing” between agitation and
analysis in Touraine’s action research method for the study of social
movements. Just as the anchor of Touraine’s approach is the dialectical
interplay between differentiated camps of sociological researchers, the key
driver of new social movements is the pedagogical synergy that emerges out of
their “Janus faced politics,” where distinct modes of collective
action complement each other. New social movement actors (e.g. feminist and
anti-nuclear activists) and academic action researchers (e.g. Andersen,
Touraine) share a common learning curve.
Following the Learning Curve of New Social
Movements
Where is the social
movement in rhetorical criticism of social movements? The search for answers to
this question parallels an ongoing quest for the quintessentially rhetorical
features of social movement protest activity. For decades, scholars have
attempted to define a unique genre of social movement rhetoric, and their
efforts have met with mixed success. Perhaps a new generation of social
movement scholars will continue this quest on reflexive level, attempting to
locate and cultivate, in McGee’s terminology, the “meaning”
of their own rhetorical critiques in terms of the social movement they convey.
Such idealizations may bring to mind fanciful notions of revolutionary
academics linked together in common cause to smash the state. Yet, these
notions not only strain credulity; they also miss the point of McGee’s
distinction between social movement as “phenomenon” and social
movement as “meaning.” One can “move” society many
different ways, short of joining a militant group bent on revolution. A whole
phalanx of students taught by activist-minded mentors such as Peter Andersen,
Thomas Farrell, Thomas Hollihan and James Klumpp may share a common commitment
to translate the fruits of their intellectual labor into forms of political
action that transcend “Ivory Tower” academic discourse. However, since
these same students express this commitment in a wide variety of political
registers and value orientations, it would be erroneous to classify them
collectively as a social movement “phenomenon” (McGee, 1980). In a
sympathetic reading of McGee, Kevin DeLuca (1999a, p. 36) explains:
The point is not that groups do not exist, just that
they are not the social movements themselves. Instead, groups, as well as
individuals or institutions, through their rhetorical tactics and strategies
create social movements, changes in public consciousness with regards to a key
issue or issues, measurable through change’s [sic] in the meanings of a
cultures [sic] key terms in public discourse.
One of these key terms in American public discourse is “freedom
of expression.” The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects
free speech by prohibiting government censorship. However, McLeod’s
(2001) book, Owning Culture, shows how these narrow First Amendment
protections do little to counter surging corporate control of the
“marketplace of ideas.” This corporate control is facilitated by an
intellectual property law regime that favors private profits over public goods:
Growing in
influence over the past quarter-century is an ideology that asserts that
ownership rights should trounce everything else, including the right to free
speech: a sort of property ownership über alles. There’s a
direct parallel between the way property laws and intellectual property laws
are currently being used to erect fences around public space – both
physical and cultural. (McLeod, 2003a)
These trends have
created a world where restaurant servers now break the law if they sing
“Happy Birthday to You” without first paying a licensing fee to
Time-Warner (see Hayes, 1993), and where a shopper wearing a shirt bearing the
message “Peace on Earth” can be arrested for trespassing after
entering a mall, on the grounds that mall owners view such clothing as
“disruptive” (see Chambers, 2003). As McLeod (2001, p. 263) notes:
“It is this terrain that we will increasingly have to navigate in the
coming years – a land of high fences, information
‘stupor-highways’ and expensive, exclusionary tollbooths.”
The Grey Tuesday protest action was organized in part as a corrective
to these alarming trends, and it provided an opportunity for McLeod to amplify
the detailed findings of his book, Owning Culture, to wider spheres of
public deliberation. In this case, McLeod broke the law to make a public
argument. But in another intervention, McLeod deployed a different strategy of
public amplification to make a similar point. In 1998, he filed an official
application to secure a trademark on the phrase “freedom of
expression.” McLeod describes the result:
Apparently,
the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office did not find the idea of someone controlling
this phrase morally, socially and politically unsettling, and it granted me
ownership of the mark in 1998. If, for instance, the ACLU wanted to publish a
magazine titled Freedom of Expression™, it would have to seek my permission and pay royalties
– and if I was in a bad mood, or didn’t agree with the ACLU’s
agenda, I could sue them for the unauthorized use of the phrase. (McLeod,
2003b, p. 44)
The notion that someone could actually own the phrase
“freedom of expression” and use such a property claim to limit the
free speech of others smacks of absurdity. Yet, the very fact that McLeod was
able to do so exposes embarrassing excesses of the copyright system that
approved his request. In contrast to his civil disobedience on Grey Tuesday,
McLeod here executed a political strategy that Slavoj Zizek (2000, p. 147)
calls “overconformity.” This strategy is premised on the idea that
activists can strike at the Achilles heel of flawed laws by taking obedience to
the extreme. By paying the $240 application fee and following the exact
procedures for requesting a registered trademark, McLeod worked within the law
to produce an absurd result that discredited the law.
But McLeod did not stop there. Next, he amplified
his argument by serving a cease and desist letter to AT&T for using
“his” phrase “freedom of expression” in a print
advertisement for long-distance telephone service – without his
permission!
The New York
Times broke the story and others picked it up. These included the U.S.
government’s overseas broadcasting arm, Voice of America, enabling
me to air my criticisms of intellectual-property law all the way to
Afghanistan. Later in the year, my framed trademark certificate adorned the
walls of the Artist’s Gallery in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Yet the most surreal moment came when a group of German artists and academics
flew me to Berlin to lecture about these high-jinks. All in all, the freedom
of expression® media prank was succeeding for me, because I finally had
found a way to broadcast to millions – including a few nutty Berliners
– a critique of current intellectual-property law that wouldn’t
normally get national or international attention. People like me, like us,
don’t usually have much of a voice in today’s massive media
conglomerates; and this prank let me turn up the volume, briefly, for something
that I care about. (McLeod, 2003a)
McLeod’s
project shows how action researchers can chart a transformative learning curve
by negotiating productive interplay between the differentiated contexts of
reflexive identity formation and direct engagement with audiences beyond the
universe of academic peers. His work is especially remarkable in light of recent
scholarship that reconsiders the political utility of Zizek’s
overconformity strategy. Henry Krips (2004) makes a double gesture, affirming
the basic assumptions of Zizek’s strategy, while pointing out the
political shortcomings inherent in Zizek’s individualized conception of
social action. To extend Zizek’s project, Krips draws on the work of
American community organizer Saul Alinsky (1971), whose “rules for
radicals” provide practical guidance for activists. Specifically, Krips
seizes on the Alinsky principle that carefully cultivated publicity can tap the
social movement potential latent in acts of overconformity: “[P]ublicity
provides the engine that multiplies the effects of individual acts to the point
that they take on social effects” (Krips, 2004, p. 127). McLeod’s
“freedom of expression” gambit is an excellent example of how
clever overconformity, magnified by publicity, can generate social movement in
the McGee/DeLuca sense of the term.
McLeod returned
safely from his “high jinks” in Berlin, but this should not obscure
the reality that pursuit of action research by scholars can entail considerable
personal, professional, and political risks (Taylor & Raeburn, 1995).
Critics undertaking social movement action research might consider following
Touraine’s strategy of bifurcating intellectual labor into agitator and
analyst categories to calibrate such risk. With this approach, one emphasis
would be on rhetorical invention and public performance, while another focus
would highlight theoretical reflection set back from the arena of public
argument. Dialogue between the agitation and analysis dimensions,
“flexions” (Touraine, 1978/1981, pp. 168-172), could enable
researchers to reflect upon and build their intellectual identities, negotiate appropriate
goals of action, invent novel strategies for using rhetorical practice to
transform the political and cultural terrain, as well as document such efforts
in scholarly publications.
In the realm of what
Touraine calls “agitation,” interventions into fields of public
argument have potential to catalyze “conversion” of defensive
struggles into new social movements. This was Touraine’s (1980/1983)
approach in his encounter with the French anti-nuclear movement, where he
worked to ratchet up the movement’s protest telos to a higher
level of confrontation with the established order. Another example of this
ratcheting process is evident in the case of damnificado protest in
Guadalajara, Mexico. This protest, which originally began as a defensive
struggle sparked by a massive chemical plant accident, was converted into a
social movement when activists recalibrated their telos to challenge the
patronage system of the Mexican government, a key pillar in the centralized
power of Mexico’s one-party political system (see Shefner & Walton,
1993, pp. 611-22). Through such maneuvers, protest groups transform their raisons
d’être and build fresh momentum to address new social
conflicts. Rhetorical interventions through action research have unique
potential to catalyze such conversions (see Schnurer, 2002), especially in
light of Touraine’s observation that the “the highest level
meaning” of many contemporary social conflicts is located in practices of
communication:
These [new social] movements are opposed to the large
organizations that have the capacity to produce, distribute, and impose
languages, information, and representations bearing upon nature, social order,
individual and collective life. . . . At a time when political life appears to
be increasingly organized around the choice between economic policies, the new
social movements deal with problems that are practically excluded from public
life and that are taken to be private. They take positions on health,
sexuality, information, and communication, and on the relation of life and
death. (Touraine, 1984/1988, p. 150; see also DeLuca, 1999a, p. 26)
Touraine’s insight
should cue the attention of public argument scholars – here is a major
sociologist saying that many of society’s contemporary controversies boil
down to conflicts over control of language, information and communicative
practices. For ages, the study of rhetoric has focused on the project of
building up people’s claim-making capacity. Touraine argues that in the
present milieu, this is precisely the type of critical project needed for new
social movements to operate at the “highest level of meaning,” one
where they are able to spot, target, and counter attempts to impose foisted
interpretations of the public interest and undermine systematically the conditions
necessary for communicative praxis in public spheres of deliberation.
Here, social actors access public debate both as a medium of communication and
as a stasis of controversy (see Farrell, 2002; Schiappa, 2002).
Activists operating in this
mode engage in what Kathryn Olson and Thomas Goodnight (1994, p. 251) call “discursive oppositional argument in social
controversy,” which “deploys refutation of claims and moves further
to dispute the implied norms of participation signaled by the
communication.” Over time, people tend to lose awareness of these norms
as they stabilize, become transparent, and recede into the background of social
reality, just as fish take for granted the water through which they swim.
However, moments of controversy triggered by powerful critique can rupture the
smooth veneer of doxa through “criticism’s version of
biology’s ‘Heisenberg effect,’” where critical
intervention undermines the “unquestioned framework of values” in
society (Klumpp & Hollihan, 1989, p. 90).
One mark of rhetorical criticism’s
Heisenberg effect can be seen in the example of action research undertaken to
explore animal rights movement protest activity. Carol J. Adams’ (1990)
theory of the “absent referent” explains how various symbolic
objectifications of meat and human body parts work in interlocking ways to
render invisible the routinized, structural violence against both animals and
women. Maxwell Schnurer’s (2002a) social movement action research draws
from Adams’ theory to invent discursive oppositional arguments designed
to transform public discussion about issues relating to animal rights and
feminist politics. Schnurer’s rhetorical interventions, in the form of
guerrilla (and gorilla!)[1]
street theater, popular publications, musical performances, and public
speeches, aim to rupture prevailing doxa by restoring the symbolic
“absent referents” that mask violence.
This project expresses
vividly Touraine’s concept of social movement “conversion”
through conglomeration of disaggregated struggles, since Schnurer’s
action research provides a “big tent” for punk rockers, feminists,
and animal rights activists to join in a common avenue of protest activity.
Such rhetorical intervention stimulates “social movement spillover,”
a phenomenon where “the ideas, tactics, style, participants, and
organizations of one movement often spill over its boundaries to affect
other social movements” (Meyer & Whittier, 1994, p. 277). The
phenomenon of movement spillover can redouble momentum behind progressive social
change, as overlapping camps of activists pool symbolic and material resources.
Promoting spillover is, at root, a rhetorical project, since it requires
inventing appropriate means of persuasion and translating these means into
various movement languages to create political
“cross-fertilization” (Schnurer, 2002a, pp. 171-177).
Phaedra Pezzullo’s
(2003) rhetorical critique of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
illustrates additional possibilities for public argument action research.
Blending counterpublic sphere theory with participatory research techniques,
Pezzullo mounts an incisive challenge to mainstream public discourse on breast
cancer. In addition to publishing her arguments in scholarly outlets, Pezzullo
amplifies her ideas through participation in street theater “image
events” (see DeLuca, 1999b), performed by the Toxic Links Coalition
(TLC), a San Francisco-based activist group dedicated to stimulating public
reflection on the causes of breast cancer. Like Schnurer, she embraces
reflexivity by making her own role as a social actor part of her analysis:
“My fieldwork with TLC suggests that using participant observation
techniques enables rhetorical critics to explore the messy complexities of
public life and the power negotiations involving emergent discourses and
counterpublics” (Pezzullo, 2003, p. 361).
Conclusion
Stanley Aronowitz
(1988, p. viii) heralded the English translation of Touraine’s
(1984/1988) Return of the Actor by observing that the book “can
contribute to the revival of American social theory.” Sixteen years
later, Aronowitz’s forecast seems prescient. The theme of the American
Sociological Association’s (ASA) 2004 national convention is
“public sociologies,” and Touraine is scheduled to address the
membership during a high-profile keynote panel on August 14.
University of California sociology professor Michael Burawoy
started planning the 2004 San Francisco convention shortly after his election
as ASA president in 2002, when he ran on a platform advocating “a
sociology that transcends the academy” (see Hausknecht, 2002). Several of
the professional organization’s key initiatives since then have reflected
the spirit of public engagement expressed in Touraine’s program of
“action sociology.” According to Burawoy (2003), public sociologies
are “enjoying a renaissance” – in recent years ASA has
launched a public interest magazine, created an award honoring exemplary public
engagement, and weighed in on public debates about affirmative action and
racial profiling.
This uptick in institutional support for
public sociologies has stimulated a good deal of reflexive debate in the field,
including commentary by such luminaries as Amitai Etzioni (2003) and Herbert
Gans (2002, 2003). Responding to concerns that pursuit of public sociologies
might jeopardize the field’s legitimacy and compromise “core”
academic research, Etzioni (2003) reflected on his own career:
I have wondered
if I would have delivered more if I had spent all of my time either sticking to
my sociological knitting or to public work. In retrospect, I say to those who
are inclined to follow a similar course that the price one pays for a double
life is worth paying and that it brings some handsome dividends, albeit not
necessarily the kind you can cash in at the bank.
Etzioni (2003) went on to explain how his
“double life” of academic research and public activism fused
together, producing a synergistic coupling that enriched both scholarship and
public argument:
I did benefit
from my social science training and lessons in social philosophy in my public
endeavors. For instance, a strategy for psychological disarmament (tension
reduction) that Charles Osgood and I developed is based on concepts and
findings drawn from social psychology. And my recommendations to President
Carter drew on studies in socio-economics. At the same time, my academic work
(like that of many other public intellectuals) gained from my public
involvement. My public role reminded the scholar in me what was of significance
and what was esoteric.
Etzioni’s comments echo the dualistic logic embraced by new
social movements, with oscillation between differentiated modes of activism
producing a cycling effect that stimulates learning and builds political
efficacy. Grounding political activism to a rigorous program of scholarly
research checks the dogmatic tendencies of activism. In turn, the drift toward
academic provincialism in scholarly research is countered by engagement in
public spheres of argument, with such engagement continuously putting the
meaning and significance of academic work in “big picture” context.
Touraine sees cultivation of this process as a political and professional
imperative in an age when reflexive awareness of the capacity for social action
is waning steadily, with the very idea of a “public” anything
placed at risk by a rising tide of political cynicism and apathy.
Public argument scholars who are familiar with the litany of
contemporary analyses bemoaning the erosion of American spheres of public
deliberation will identify with the part of the 2004 ASA Convention Theme
Statement declaring that one of the key challenges facing public sociology is:
“To defend the very idea of the public, increasingly threatened by
privatization programs, multinational firms, mass media, unfettered commerce,
and national security regimes” (Burawoy, 2004a; see also Burawoy, 2004b).
Notably, the ASA leadership views public debate as an essential
tool for meeting this challenge: “Public debate stimulates the
sociological imagination just as it is necessary for a vibrant democracy”
(Burawoy, 2003). In the field of communication, young scholars such as Kembrew
McLeod, Phaedra Pezzullo, and Maxwell Schnurer continue to spark the
imagination of colleagues with a style of intellectual work that creatively
blends rigorous academic research with bold public interventions that breathe
life into democratic spheres of public deliberation. Their work is inspiring
partly because it is so innovative and unpredictable, with similar lines of
critique refracted dramatically through multiple vectors of public argument,
including guerilla street theater, op-ed pieces, punk rock concerts, media
pranks, and art shows, not to mention scholarly publications in leading
academic journals and books.
Such work also sparks imagination by showing how the kinetic
energy of academic labor can fuel social movements. For decades, rhetoricians
and sociologists have struggled gamely to fashion theoretical systems of
generic classification that stabilize “social movement” as a theoretical
category. This essay has largely skirted such theoretical debates and instead
explored the promises and pitfalls of a research program informed by the idea
that social movement happens when the gears of public deliberation swing into
motion and the meanings of key terms in public discourse shift in the course of
argument.
This line of inquiry presents a fresh take on the shopworn issue
of social movement rhetoric’s generic classification. For many years, a
perennial question facing rhetorical critics has been: Where is the rhetoric in
social movements? Inverting this question reframes the research challenge:
Where is the social movement in rhetorical criticism? This reflexive turn plays
to the strengths of public argument scholars who are capable of both explaining
processes of argumentation to scholarly audiences and amplifying their findings
to wider spheres of public deliberation. Since this double gesture jibes with
recent trends in sociology, where “public sociology” and
“action research” methodologies have gained currency, cross-field
theorization may enable public argument scholars to cultivate social movement
in their acts of rhetorical criticism. Likewise, sociological analyses of
“new social movements” stand to gain from cross-fertilization with
public argument scholarship. Numerous sociologists suggest that a defining
feature of new social movements is their tendency to locate pivotal points of
social struggle in contests over communicative practices. Public argument
scholars are attuned to these contests and have developed an array of theories
to explain them.
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[1] Schnurer (2002b) has analyzed mainstream media
coverage of his appearance at protest demonstrations wearing a gorilla suit.