Paper Submission 2006 ASA Annual Meeting

The Sustainability of Social Movements: Emotion and Instrumentality in Two Logics of Collective Action1
Rachel Meyer, University of Michigan (remeyer@umich.edu)

** DRAFTPLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION **

Students of social change, particularly those investigating collective action, have long wrestled with the question of the origins of protest. Working within the legacy of Olson (1965), who classically formulated the problem of how individuals become motivated to act collectively for the common good, scholars have sought to identify the conditions that spur mobilization, from sweeping revolutionary movements (Paige 1975; Skocpol 1979; Wood 2003) to the micro-level dynamics of protest groups (Snow et al. 1980; McAdam 1988). Scholars less frequently look at what contributes to the sustainability of social movements, and so the question remains: under what conditions will protest flourish or instead be left to wither on the vine? Those sociologists who have addressed this question (often under the rubric of movement demise) have done so in two primary ways: in terms of institutionalization and the role of organizations (or lack thereof), and also in terms of the nature of opposition or countermovements. These explanations are characterized by conflicting accounts and contradictory predictions. Regarding the role of organizations in movement sustainability, resource mobilization theory (McCarthy and Zald 1977) can be used to account for how more permanent organizational structures sustain activism in between bursts of collective action, while other perspectives, in line with Michels (1962 [1915]) iron law of oligarchy, associate such formal organizations with the demise of insurgent activity (Piven and Cloward 1977). In the literature on

countermovements, movement opponents often suppress, but can also sustain, mobilization (Meyer and Staggenborg 1996; Zald and Useem 1987). Scholars have approached the sustainability of mobilization almost exclusively in terms of organization/institutionalization and opposition, despite the fact that the theorization of these themes has left much unresolved regarding the potential of social movements to endure. And they have rarely approached the issue in terms of a key component of collective action: the role of emotion or affect. Scholars have not yet engaged in comparative work on how the experience of instrumental versus affective collective action impacts participants ability to sustain protest. This study examines the issue of sustainability in the context of the labor movement, which has enjoyed a lengthy tenure on the American political landscape while at the same time suffering from a decades-long decline that raises the possibility of the movements ultimate demise. I examine two cases of collective action among low-wage workers in the contemporary Midwest. In the first case, a group of strikers all at the same workplace, who organized on an instrumental basis, showed little interest in sustaining struggle in the strikes aftermath. Instead, they sought labor-management peace. In their ideal world, conflict would be confined to the strike, and would not extend past it. The second case, an emotion-laden living wage campaign, led participants to what I call a perpetual struggle orientation where conflict and mobilization were perceived as ongoing. Poised and ready to continue the fight, their expectations for the future were quite different from those of the strikers. Instead of expecting peace with elites, they anticipated more conflict, insisting that the struggle must go on. Theorists of class have emphasized the point of production as the locus of class formation. This producerist perspective goes back to Marx who saw the proletariat (those who sell their labor power) as the revolutionary subject, most likely to develop class consciousness. [Hodsons ambitious Workplace Ethnography Project (2002) is a recent example of the focus on the workplace in working class formation.] This focus on workplace-based action emphasizes, and sometimes even valorizes, the strike as the quintessential form of working class mobilization (Brecher 1997). The strike is viewed as the most militant of working class actions, as workers ultimate weapon against capital. All this would lead one to 2

believe that strikers, as icons of labor militancy who draw strength from their ability to disrupt capital at the point of production, would be more likely to develop an enduring commitment to working class struggle than a community group that included the unemployed and other marginal sectors of the working class. But the findings presented here challenge this conventional wisdom and lead to some surprising conclusions. Why didnt the strikers, after employing labors ultimate weapon against capital, come to embrace their militancy for the long-term? Why would living wage campaign activists, unable to exert power at the point of production, feel engaged in a perpetual struggle whereas the group of strikers did not? In this paper I argue that the affective bonds of a broad-based movement, where peoples ties to each other are less instrumental, led participants to experience the benefits of collective action in psychological, instead of material, terms. This amounted to the development of an activist identity which sustained a commitment to continued struggle for those who remained in need. Instrumental versus Affective Collective Action Social movement scholars, most prominently Goodwin and Jasper (2004), have critiqued the dominant paradigm of recent decades, as manifested in resource mobilization and political process theory, that emphasizes rational, purposive, and strategic action, and have called for, as in the title of one piece, bringing emotions back into the study of social movements (Gould 2004; also see Aminzade and Mcadam 2001; Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta 2001a; Groves 1995). Even the recent cultural turn in social movement theory, with a focus on framing and collective identity, has exhibited a cognitive bias (Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta 2000; Jasper 1998). Emotions were placed squarely at the center of social movement theory in the early collective behavior school, but they were conceptualized as deviant and irrational organic states, rather than culturally-mediated and emergent in social interaction. And so as they call for the reinsertion of emotions into social movement research, scholars have questioned these negative connotations along with the problematic juxtaposition of emotion versus rationality (Aminzade and Mcadam 2001; Calhoun 2001; Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta 2000 and 2001b).

But scholars are still at the point of struggling for the mere inclusion of emotions in research on protest, and explicating the thus far unrecognized emotional underpinnings of existing concepts in social movement theory (Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta 2001b; Jasper 1998). And so they speak of applying the theme to social movements generally, but have not yet embarked on comparative work regarding how social movements vary in terms of their emotional tenor, or the extent to which they are emotional at all.2 Gould (2002) is a rare example of someone who has focused on emotion in studying movement sustainability but, employing a single-case study (typical of much social movement research), her convincing analysis begs for comparative work on the topic.3 Emotion will be more or less relevant to different kinds of collective action, so that some forms of protest will exhibit more instrumental traits while others will be more affective. In place of the overly-emotional view exhibited by the collective behavior school and the overly-rational view of the more recent paradigm, here I recognize how both affect and rationality are constitutive of human experience. In the recent turn to emotions, scholars have pointed to how affect and feeling are found in all social movements. Moving beyond a call for the blanket inclusion of emotions in research, here, instead, I seek to highlight how social movements vary in terms of the extent to which affect or instrumentality is in the foreground. This is not to reproduce an emotion-rationality dichotomy, as the two can easily coexist and can reinforce one another, but to recognize that emotion will have a greater role in some forms of collective action as compared to others. Thinking, then, of instrumental and affective collective action as ideal-typical constructs, representing extreme ends of a continuum: what are the consequences of more instrumental versus affective protest? In particular, the present study asks: how does this bear on the question of social movement sustainability? Research Design: The Economic and Political Logics of Collective Action This paper explores how different experiences of collective action lead to transformations of workers consciousnessin particular, with regard to their orientation toward ongoing class struggle. In examining the varieties of working class collective action, this study focuses on the work/community divide which for many years has figured prominently in empirical and theoretical research on class 4

formation (Katznelson 1981; Somers 1997; Stepan-Norris 1997; also see recent treatments of communitybased labor organizing in Clawson 2003 and Fantasia and Voss 2004). Instead of treating the work/community divide geographically, as mere sites of struggle, I seek to contribute to this literature by presenting a model of different logics of collective actionthat is, practices that occur in systematic ways, with patterned characteristics and consistent inter-relationships. To better conceptualize these logics, I have delineated an axis along which collective action can be categorized with respect to the workplace versus community distinction. The logics of action at each end of the continuum are ideal types, and they represent these two classic arenas of labor struggle. The first, workplace-based, mode of collective action disrupts production and capital accumulation. Using an economic logic of action, its classic form is the strike, where workers withdraw labor at the point of production. Characterized by an intense disruptive capacity, the economic logic of collective action, in its pure form, takes place over a limited period of time. And it relies on a narrow constituency, limited in some way by location, identity, etc. Workers target a particular worksite or company, and mobilization is generally limited to laborers who are directly employed. It thus mobilizes those who stand to benefit from collective action, but does not tend to reach beyond the walls of the factory or workplace. This makes for a more instrumental mode of action, where mobilization is based on common material interests. On the other hand, community-based mobilization takes place through a political logic of collective action which disrupts the ideological reproduction of political legitimacy. It challenges the legitimacy of political officials and relies on public pressure campaigns. Participants must engage in mass mobilization over an extended period of time in order to exert enough leverage to achieve their goals. Rather than targeting one company or a particular work site, it relies on a broad constituency involving multiple and diverse groups (for example, a variety of worksites, industries, neighborhoods, ethnic groups, etc.), or that is construed as the general public. Among such diverse constituencies, some participants do not directly benefit from the struggle. The political logic of collective action is thus less clearly instrumental, instead exhibiting a more affective mode of mobilization. 5

The two cases examined here represent these two logics of collective action: a strike and a community-organizing campaign. Though both are drawn from the contemporary American labor movement, they represent the ideal types located at opposite ends of the economic-political spectrum.4 The first case, a traditional workplace strike, is an exemplar of the economic logic of collective action, in which a strike at a relatively small auto parts supplier quickly resulted in the idling of workers at a much larger Big 3 final assembly shop.5 Led primarily by white and African American male leaders, it secured recognition of the union after just three days. While a group of employees and their supporters gathered outside the plant as the strike commenced, the union did not reach out to the larger community. The supporters were fellow union members, and almost all of them were from the same local union as the strikers. Moreover, the supporters came primarily from the closely-related customer shop, where the parts used to be manufactured before being outsourced. And so not only did the auto shops employees have a direct interest in the strikes outcome, but most of the supporters also stood to benefit from a strike victory. Since the unionization of subcontractors has a direct impact on workers welfareand pay checksin the larger assembly shops, even the supporters had an economic interest in the strike. In short, the mobilization was limited to those who were directly connected to this particular workplace, and so there was an instrumental quality to this collective action event. Although emotions were high on the picket line (the specific kind of emotions exhibited will be discussed below), organizers advocated strike participation in terms of a very practical, cognitive argument. In order to convince workers to stay on the picket line instead of going to work, they rallied around the idea that if workers walked out for even a very short period of time, they could secure a union contract and make significant gains in material compensation and working conditions.6 The second case, a community-based living wage campaign in Chicago, involved an extended political campaign targeting city council members and the mayor. The campaign employed a variety of tactics to put pressure on public officials, including many large rallies and demonstrations. ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and SEIU (the Service Employees International Union) Local 880 spearheaded the campaign, but some 70 organizations were also involved, 6

from neighborhood groups to unions and community organizations. And the campaign was more ethnically diverse than previous Chicago mobilizations, as African Americans and Latinos forged new solidarities through joint collective action. But most participants would not in the end be directly affected by the ordinance which covered only city contractors. And although the ranks of the living wage campaign were filled with low-wage workers, it included many activists from segments of the working class not engaged in paid labor: retirees, homemakers, the homeless, and the unemployed. Since most activists did not stand to benefit materially from the new law, the mobilization occurred not on an instrumental, but on an affective, basis. Instead of engaging in practical calculations about the benefits gained through mobilization, as in the strike case, organizers used the stories of low-wage workers, who spoke out about the desperation of living in the City of Chicago while making minimum wage, to motivate people to action.7 Responding to these stories, campaign participants rallied around a sense of moral outrage, and empathy for those who suffered. In 1998, after a three-year battle, activists won passage of a living wage ordinance covering for-profit city contractors and subcontractors. When it comes to the emotional quality of collective action, cases of protest will generally exhibit both instrumental and affective traits.8 Some kind of cognitive calculation will always figure into protest, and so even the living wage case had instrumental goals. Similarly, as scholars have recently noted, collective action always entails an emotional aspect, and so there were clear emotions at the height of the strike confrontation despite its instrumental underpinnings. But the specific kind of emotion exhibited in the two cases was distinct. Jasper (1997;1998) has juxtaposed more reactive, transitory emotions (immediate responses to events and information) with more stable affective feeling states (attached to enduring social bonds and moral commitments), and this distinction is relevant for understanding the two cases at hand. [Also see Goodwin, Jasper and Polletta (2001b) who conceptualize the duration of emotions in a way that maps onto Jaspers distinction.] To elaborate on this distinction, I conceptualize these two kinds of emotion as attaching to the different logics of collective action presented here in a patterned way. The emotions of the strike confrontationexcitement, fear, joywere reactive and transitory, as is typical of the more short-term economic logic of action. Workers referred to adrenaline 7

when describing what it was like being on the picket line.9 And so with emotions so fleeting, it was the instrumentality of the strike that was its legacy as articulated by participants below. On the other hand, the emotions of the living wage campaign were of the more long-term affective type typical of social bonds, and rooted in moral sentiments. Participants expressed anger at human suffering and injustice. And so the emotional aspect of the campaign had a resilience and long-term salience that overshadowed the campaigns more marginal instrumental aspects. It is also simply the case that an instrumental logic dominated the strike, while the living wage campaign was infused with strong feeling and affective bonds, with empathy and moral outrage. And so there were distinct differences between the two cases, such that they serve to represent ideal-typical economic and political collective action. One might hypothesize that the group of strikers, uniting around common experience and material interest, and employing workers ultimate weapon against capital by withdrawing their labor at the point of production, would have a heightened sense of cohesion and solidarity, finding it easier to continue to mobilize together in the strikes aftermath. Conversely, participants in the living wage campaign, many of whom were unemployed, homeless, or retired, did not reflect the traditional image of the proletariat and had less instrumental ties to the movement. It might be assumed that such a group would have a hard time maintaining solidarity over the long haul. But the cases examined here demonstrate the reverse. Participants in the living wage campaign came away with a greater dedication to ongoing struggle than the strikers. What explains this surprising finding? Why was the group that had less instrumental ties to the movement able to come together for future mobilization, developing what I call a perpetual struggle orientation? In this paper I argue that the strikers, employing a more instrumental mode of action, saw the consequences of collective action primarily in terms of improvements in material compensation and working conditions. Once their material needs were taken care of, they were not driven to continue the struggle. In contrast, the affective nature of the living wage campaign, and the fact that not everyone would be covered by the ordinance, meant that in lieu of material gain participants enjoyed psychological benefits from participation that amounted to a transformation of personal identity. They came to identify 8

as activists, committed to struggle for the long-term. In short, I argue that living wage participants newfound activist identity underwrote a long-term commitment to class struggle that was absent among strikers who shared bonds of common material interest. This study relies on in-depth interviews with 42 respondents, primarily with rank-and-file workers but also with key activists, leaders and staff, that were conducted between April and August of 2004. I use the interviews, which are supplemented by archival data and participant observation, to assess the impact of different kinds of collective action on each group.10

Expectations of Conflict and Peace: A Living Wage Campaign and an Auto Strike In the aftermath of the living wage campaign and the auto strike, there developed a fundamental difference in the two cases with regards to workers expectations about struggle and their ability to sustain protest over the long haul. After the living wage campaign, participants expected ongoing conflict with elites so that struggle came to be seen as a way of life. In contrast, the auto workers hoped that conflict would dissipate post-strike. They expected labor-management peace and that struggle should be limited to exceptional moments instead of becoming a routine part of everyday life. Even though they had achieved a great victory with passage of the city ordinance, and though the Chicago Jobs and Living Wage Campaign was technically over, there was a sense among participants that the struggle was ongoing. This union member, for example, who was involved in subsequent campaigns, alluded to both state-level wage struggles and the second Chicago living wage ordinance passed in 2002 that included an increase and annual index for inflation: Matter of fact, we just went to Springfield last month. We fighting for a living wage again. So, we never stop. We might pause, but we dont never give up. . . . And we succeeded in 98, and we succeeded in 2002. Were going back again and were going to succeed again for one more dollar, then after that were going to fight again. The fightings never over. It just began. . . . Theres always going to be a struggle. A struggle is fighting. . . . Wes not through fighting, we not satisfied, we not content. The fight will still be going on.11

Articulating a perpetual struggle orientation, this participant felt that even after success the fight was never over. Conflict was expected as a routine part of life, rather than being an isolated event. Instead of shying away from further conflict, she embraced it. In a similar vein, one participant, who became involved through ACORN, highlighted how the fight for a living wage was not over, but had only just begun: We want to have another increase in the minimum wage within two years. . . . So this is not finished, it is just beginning. We are going to ask for $9.00 an hour because the cost of living has gone up and it is very difficult for people to live in this city. Seeing the struggle for a living wage as ongoing, he emphasized the need to gain even more than what was already accomplished with the 1998 ordinance. To him, the campaign heralded the beginning rather than the endof the struggle for a living wage. When another ACORN member, a homemaker, was asked for her final comments she noted: Only that we must keep fighting.12 Another union member described how she thought the campaign affected those who were involved: It make them feel like, Okay, I can go at the next one, now. I can go at theokay, just like if we won that living wage campaign right: That was just the city. But then they think about, Okay, were trying to organize [company name]. Instead of participants shying away from further activism after their victory, the campaign encouraged participants to go at the next one, to move on to the next organizing target, beyond the city to other venues. In continuing the fight, participants felt the campaign should be taken beyond the City of Chicago, to other levels: I think it should be across country, not just state-wide, not just city-wide. I think it should be the whole entire country.13 It is not merely that perpetual struggle was expected by living wage campaign participants. It was also desired, and couched in a positive emotional tone. Although one might expect the concept of perpetual struggle to lead to demoralization and feelings of futility, that was not the case here. Instead, living wage participants rose to the occasion. This union member described what it felt like to be at one of the campaigns large rallies, and feeling always upbeat about struggle:

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Oh, we was fired up; fired up! We wont take it no more. We are fired up! Thats our theme songwe fired up; we not going to take this anymore. We be always upbeat, whether we get it or not. Because you cant down yourself; you gotta keep fighting if you want to win something. For her, perpetual struggle was not something accepted in a flat, matter-of-fact manner. Instead, it was something to be fired up about. A retired ACORN member echoed these positive sentiments: It was very gratifying, I must admit. I enjoyed what I was doing. As an unemployed participant simply put it: The living wage campaign was a great satisfaction for me.14 Participants experienced joy, pride, gratification, and satisfaction through protestin the living wage campaign and beyond. Instead of experiencing perpetual struggle as a burden, they embraced it as something that contributed to their quality of life. In contrast to living wage campaign participants, workers at the auto shop were not prepared to continue the struggle post-strike. Instead, they expected peace and labor-management accord. Although this accord did not existthere were constant skirmishes over work pace, job elimination, discipline, and health and safety issuesworkers resisted the idea of using ongoing mobilization to solve the myriad of shop floor problems they faced. This difference was embodied in the contrasting emotional tenor of struggle for the two groups: strikers were disappointed by it while living wage activists became excited, animated, and alive. In the aftermath of the strike, workers experienced struggle and conflict as draining. These sentiments were exhibited by this rank-and-file worker when referring to worker-management relations on the shop floor post-strike: Its like a constant fight and it really kind ofsometimes Ill participate in it and sometimes Ill just do [what management wants me to] just because I dont want the fight. I really dont like to do that. Instead of embracing the prospect of continual struggle, she avoided it. In the case of a dispute over a job assignment she remarked: I didnt fight it; I should have. I really should have, but I dont have the energy for it sometimes.15 These sentiments were echoed by local union leadership. When asked if workers had any confrontations with management since the strike, one leader replied: Ive had some [confrontations], but 11

workers not really. Not so much that type of thing. Theyll come to me because theyre ticked off and Ill lose it, but theyve been pretty good about that. The idea that workers had been good about not confronting management implies that the ideal worker and union member is one who is not struggling to solve shop floor problems. In a similar vein, when this leader was asked if workers had been involved in any group protest or collective action since the strike he replied: No, we havent had any problems like that. I hope we better dont get that far.16 Worker protest was seen as a problem, as a divergence from what should be expected during the normal course of labor-management relations. What explains these divergent attitudes toward sustained protest? Why does one group come to embrace protest as part of daily life while the other sees it as occurring only with the breakdown of normal relationships? Why do the strikers feel drained by struggle while it infuses the living wage activists with enthusiasm? I will argue that the living wage participants perpetual struggle orientation sprung not from experiencing the material gains of victory, but from personal transformations that they experienced within themselves. The Psychological Benefits of Activism17: Personal Transformation versus Material Gain The particular kinds of benefits that workers felt they accrued in the two cases depended on the logics of action involved and, in particular, the distinction between instrumental and affective collective action. Experiencing the economic logic of collective action, where narrow mobilization occurs on a more instrumental basis, strikers focused on the consequent improvements in wages, benefits, and working conditions. They emphasized how the strike succeeded in making practical, material changes to their workplace environment. In contrast, with the living wage campaign, marked by an affective quality typical of broad-based mobilization and the political logic of collective action, participants articulated the consequences of collective action not in terms of material gain, but personal transformation. Rather than emphasizing changes to their external environment, they instead emphasized how the campaign transformed their thinking and the positive feelings it inspired. Participants focused on the psychological, rather than material, benefits of activism; in Jaspers (1997) words, the satisfaction and pleasures of protest.18 More specifically, participants learned about and developed positive feelings toward 12

mobilization and struggle. They came to identify as activists, and through this newfound role their perpetual struggle orientation came alive. The difference between the two cases cannot be explained by their stated goals since, unlike post-materialist identity movements, both mobilizations were looking to gain material improvements for low-wage workers. But they employed different logics of collective action in pursuit of this same objective, and this is where workers experience diverged. The economic logic of collective action is characterized by an instrumental quality, used by workers whose common material interests are immediate and palpable. Reflecting this instrumental logic, strikers discussed the outcome of the strike and its consequences with reference to material gain and improved working conditions, as articulated by these rank-and-file workers when asked what the strike accomplished: We ended up making a lot more money, I can tell you that muchand that has a lot of pull with people. . . . The tardiness and lateness benefits are not only completely laid out, but evenly enforced. And I guess that was an issue before the strike that tardiness and lateness were not evenly enforced. And that riled up a lot of people. Now we know that if youre late, youre late, and if youre not, youre not. Wages, benefits, job security. Before they could just fire you if they didnt like you. So, you really had to kiss their ass. Job security probably number one. I dont think I would have lasted this long.19 The emphasis in these narratives is on changes to the external environment, to the situation workers encountered in their daily lives at work. Workers saw the greatest accomplishments of the strike as increased compensation for their labors and fair treatment on the job. They put particular emphasis on the achievement of some measure of job security and protections against discipline and firing. Job security was invoked by white and African American union leaders alike when asked if anything had changed as a consequence of the strike: The revolving door at the front has been put out of business. As far as people being terminated, it just doesnt happen anymore. In the past there would be one, two, three people sometimes terminated on the same day and that just doesnt happen anymore. . . . So the discipline aspect of it has definitely improved. The revolving door stopped. That firing somebody every week, firing somebody every two weeks, that came to a complete halt. Theres no more of that.

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This emphasis on job security and working conditions invokes not personal transformation but a change in the surrounding environment. One worker even pointed to job security when asked how the strike affected him personally. For him, being affected personally was not experienced as an internal psychological transformation or learning experience, but was about changes in the external environment and the labor relations climate.20 The strikers did not regularly invoke the psychological benefits of mobilization, what they learned from the strike, or how it affected them on a mental or emotional level; instead, they focused on the material achievements of collective action. Such a focus precludes the development of a perpetual struggle orientation since material benefits can be solidified in union contracts or legislation. If material outcomes are the most important, as they were from the strikers perspective, there is no need to continue the fight once these concerns are addressed in such codified, institutionalized forms. We can expect that if the living wage activists had likewise emphasized the importance of material gain, their desire to continue the struggle would have been similarly truncated by the enactment of living wage legislation. But with the more affective logic of political action required when uniting disparate groups, living wage campaign participants, in contrast, experienced the achievements of mobilization in terms of personal transformation. They did acknowledge that some people received a salary increase because of the campaign but, as discussed above, this was couched as a limited, partial accomplishment and was not, in any case, a major theme. Participants instead focused on how the campaign led to ideological and psychological changein particular on how they learned about organizing and mobilization. According to one participant, the campaign did change my way of thinking, so that he learned that it is a struggle that one must undertake. Activists couched these personal transformations in terms of expanding our minds and thinking outside the box. The campaign served as an educational experience, as taken-forgranted ideologies and old worldviews were challenged: There was some learning momentsthat moment when you like, ah-ha! As articulated by this participant, the experience was not merely about learning new facts or gathering information; instead it was about inspirationah-ha!21

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These personal transformations were not just cognitiveabout thinking and learningbut emotional as well. The experience of mass mobilization simply made participants feel good. This was articulated by a rank-and-file member of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless when she described what it felt like to be at one of the campaigns large rallies: It made me feel good to see all those people out there. It made me feelwhen youre in situations a lot of times, you feel like youre the only person that this is happening to. So when you get out there and you see this great big crowd of people, and you go: Wait a minute. Its not me by myself. That does kind of give you a little lift. Cause a lot of people go through a depression when they going through this. By seeing that theres hundreds of people going through the thing, you go: Okay, well, Im not alone. Its a good feeling to know youre not alone. I mean, even though we all going through the same thing, at least Im not by myself, you know, and that makes you feel better.22 By taking part in mass protest, she overcame feelings of isolation and came to identify with other living wage activists who had similar problems meeting their basic needs. This experience gave her an emotional lift, so that the payoff of the campaign involved affective instead of material rewards. Instead of feeling demoralized by the limited scope of the law, these positive feelings developed even in activists who were not directly affected by the wage increase. As articulated by a union member, this reflected the developing empathy discussed above: It didnt affect me, but it makes you feel good because you helped somebody else. The participant from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless noted this same sentiment in the context of discussing her continued activism since the living wage campaign: And most of the time, even with the living wageeven though Im not getting the living wageit still makes it worthwhile that there is some people out here that are getting it because of something that I was part of. So that makes me feel good even though Im not getting it. I still feel good about the fact that they get the living wage and its because of somebody . . . .23 She enjoyed a psychological and emotional benefit from participation even in the absence of personal material gain. For living wage campaign participants, struggle wasnt an albatross around their necks, but a badge of honor. A central aspect of the transformation experienced by the campaigns participants is that it inspired a transformation of personal identityof everyday workers and citizens into activists. One

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participant, for example, was motivated to become a professional organizer through the living wage campaign: Right after [the living wage campaign] I started talking about organizing. I had a young family at that time, and I said then, during the living wage campaign, that whenever my son got to the point where he was getting ready to graduate from high school, I was going to start organizing. So it happened during the living wage campaign. Thats what made me feel like you can make change. In embracing this newfound activist role, participants were motivated and inspired to continue the struggle. One ACORN member, for example, when asked what has changed since the living wage campaign, replied: Well, it motivated people. It motivated the people to continuenot only to continue to be involved but to even get more involved in fighting for your community, for your rights, and that kind of thing. It was a motivational kind of thing. She continued, describing how the campaign affected her personally: It inspired me. It inspired me to get more involved; to promote ACORN even more; to talk about the ills that we have as a minority, as low income people. In a similar vein, a participant from a neighborhood group discussed personal transformation in terms of how the campaign educated and empowered her to continue to struggle: I think it was a great education for me. It empowered me to fight for bigger and better things.24 While the auto shop strikers felt that struggle was over once the strike was over, the living wage campaign, in contrast, led people to get more involved and to fight for bigger and better things. It turned workers and citizens into activists. Strikers and living wage activists alike focused on the positive consequences of collective action. Both groups thought that mobilization was worthwhile, and that it made significant improvements in their lives. But the nature of these improvements was fundamentally different in the two cases. The strikers emphasized concrete changes in the external world, in their working conditions and material well-being. In contrast, the payoff for living wage campaign participants was cognitive and emotional. Everyday people were inspired to become activists and commit themselves to sustained mobilization and perpetual struggle.

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Because not everyone involved in broad-based mobilizations benefits equally from social movement success, it is inherent in the political logic of collective action that many activists are acting on others behalf. As articulated by living wage campaign participants above, they thus gain the emotional benefits that come from helping others. They were emotionally rewarded for mobilizing on behalf of a greater good, and so they came to identify with such actions. It was through acting in this less instrumental, mores selfless fashion, that participants developed an activist identity. (The findings of Cornfield and Hodson (1993), though coming out of a very different kind of study, are parallel to those presented here. They surveyed members of a state employees union and found that those who joined for ideological and social reasons, as compared to materialistic or instrumental ones, were more likely to become socially integrated and active in the union.) Union contracts and legislation crystallize the achievements of social movement for a period of time, and so they have the potential to undercut continued mobilization. But while both of the groups examined here secured victory through a codified, institutionalized mechanisma union contract for the strikers and legislation for living wage protestorsthis undermined continual struggle only in the strike case where workers saw the benefits of activism in terms of material gain.25 But a very different dynamic ensued in the living wage case, where participants focus on personal transformation and their developing activist identity underwrote a perpetual struggle orientation. As theorized by Butler (1988; 1990) in the case of gender, identities must be performed in order to be maintained. They must be must be constantly enacted, renewed and recreated, as people make their way through daily life. Living wage campaign participants newfound activist identity was not something to be put on a shelf like a union contract or a piece of legislation. Instead, it led them to embrace struggle as an integral and ongoing part of their lives. Conclusion One might expect that strikers, having engaged in such a militant form of class conflict, using labors ultimate weapon against capital, might be expected to develop an enduring commitment to struggle. But this was not the case in the strike examined here. Instead, it was a broad community-based campaign, which included those not engaged in paid labor, that engendered in activists a perpetual 17

struggle orientation. This study shows how the affective nature of the political logic of collective action has profound psychological, rather than material, consequences, including personal transformation toward an activist identity. In the Chicago living wage campaign, this transformation of self-identity underwrote the development of a perpetual struggle orientation and a commitment to continued mobilization. In broad-based and diverse community organizing, activists often take on the causes of others instead of fighting to advance their own direct and immediate interests. This is not the case with workplace-based collective action that takes place within the confines of a particular workplace or company. Cases that typify the economic logic of collective action are limited in scope, taking place among a relatively narrow constituency where all participants are materially affected by the gains that come with victory. With a more narrow and circumscribed group, as in the auto strike case examined here, the mobilization takes on an instrumental quality, since it is focused more directly on the interests of those involved. In short, activists are fighting on their own behalf. Unlike the living wage activists, all of the strikers benefited from the unionization and subsequent contract that came out of the strike victory. And so, because of their focus on material gain, once the strike succeeded in meeting its goals, there was nothing that compelled them to go further. Paradoxically, the strikers who all experienced the material benefits of mobilization were not predisposed to continued collective action, whereas the living wage participants who were less materially affected by they campaigns victory ended up with a greater commitment to ongoing struggle.

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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Snow, David A., Louis A. Zurcher Jr., and Sheldon Ekland-Olson. 1980. Social Networks and Social Movements: A Microstructural Approach to Differential Recruitment. American Sociological Review 45(5):787-801. Somers, Margaret R. 1997. Deconstructing and Reconstructing Class Formation Theory: Narrativity, Relational Analysis, and Social Theory. Pp. 73-105 in Reworking Class, edited by John R. Hall. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Stepan-Norris, Judith. 1997. The Integration of Workplace and Community Relations at the Ford Rouge Plant, 1930s-1940s. Pp. 3-44 in Political Power and Social Theory, edited by Diane E. Davis. Greenwich, CT: Jai Press, Inc. Wood, Elisabeth Jean. 2003. Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador. New York: Cambridge University Press. Zald, Mayer and Bert Useem. 1987. Movement and Countermovement Interaction: Mobilization, Tactics, and State Involvement. Pp. 247-71 in Social Movements in an Organizational Society, edited by Mayer Zald and John McCarthy. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

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I would like to thank Howard Kimeldorf who has been involved with this project from its conception and whose interventions, on both written drafts and in conversation, have been extremely valuable. I would also like to thank Dan Clawson, David Dobbie, James Herron, Ian Robinson, Judy Stepan-Norris and Mayer Zald for their thoughtful comments on drafts of this paper or other parts of this project. I am deeply grateful to the workers and activists whose testimony underlies this analysis. This paper is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES 0424768 and under a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Funding for this research project also came from the University of Michigan through a Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship and the Sociology Departments Dissertation/Thesis Grant. 2 The need for comparative studies on the role of emotions in social movements has been recognized by Polletta and Amenta (2001) and also Aminzade and McAdam (2001) who, in indicating directions for future research, state: Further research should shed light on whether movements with different emphases (for example, identity building or policy change) have different emotional climates and whether there is a relationship between appeals to particular emotions and particular movements, movement cultures, or collective action repertoires (47). 3 Jasper (1997, chapter 8) likewise relies on a single case (and one with some unique characteristics) to address this topic. 4 To carry out a comparative analysis of such distinct modes of collective action, I have carefully selected these cases to control for those variables that do not pertain to the economic/political distinction. The workers themselves, for example, have much in common, in particular with regard to their position in the economy. They come from the less privileged ranks of the working class in terms of income, education, and job security. They are low-wage workersall in the Midwest whose experience is far from the image of the bourgeois working class that circulates in both academic and popular discussions. And unlike some workers in heavy industry, their jobs in lighter industry and the service sector do not have a long history of unionization. In both cases workers were breaking new ground and winning first victories (getting living wage legislation passed in Chicago for the very first time and gaining union recognition in a previously non-union shop). Characterized by rank-and-file worker involvement and grassroots mobilization, participants in these two events succeeded in meeting their goals after going through intense experiences of collective action. While the cases share these fundamental features, at the same time they were chosen because they represent extreme examples of the economic and political logics of collective action, and because they diverged in terms of a constellation of traits that are relevant to these opposing logics. 5 In order to maintain respondents confidentiality, company names have been changed and some characteristics of the strike case have been omitted or altered. Any obvious omissionsspecific location and dates, for exampleare intentional. Although specific details may have been changed, anything that is crucial to the research design and analysis is represented in spirit. 6 Union staff interview April 20, 2004. 7 Such testimony was regularly heard at living wage campaign events, including: a city council Finance Committee hearing, July 16, 1996 (such hearings werent just bureaucratic exercises, but mobilizing tools, since they were often well-attended by living wage activists, as this one was); The Living Wage Tour: A Tour of the Real Chicago organized, in part, for delegates of the Democratic National Convention (August 28, 1996); and the campaigns citywide speakouts for a living wage, held throughout the city in June and July, 1997. The stories of workers barely able to survive in the city on low-wage work made it into the pages of the citys major newspapers, which often featured the home care workers who were central to the campaign; see Minimum Expectations by Byron P. White, Chicago Tribune, May 27, 1996 and The Wage Debate by Janet Kidd Stewart, Chicago Sun-Times, May 8, 1996. 8 This point was lost on the reified old versus new social movement dichotomy. Although new social movement theory did not address emotions systematically, it juxtaposed movements for material gain against post-materialist movements around culture and identity. But identity has been salient, for example, in traditional labor movements at the same time that new social movement recruits are capable of engaging in rational calculation about the benefits of participation. 9 Worker interviews May 12, August 3 and 12, 2004. 10 I selected respondents, in part, through snowball sampling using recommendations from both leaders and workers. And there were theoretical concerns driving the selection process, as I sought to obtain a sample that was representative in terms of both demographic characteristics and the nature of movement participation. In order to get at the central problematic of the consequences of collective action, respondents were asked questions pertaining to before, during and after the collective action event. The interviews were supplemented by limited participant observation (attending meetings, spending time at offices, etc.) at the unions and community organizations examined in this study and by archival material from both the mainstream and alternative press including metropolitan-area, local, community, and union publications. In addition, the data include meeting minutes, leaflets, newsletters, educational materials, and internal memos produced by the various organizations involved. 11 SEIU Local 880 member interview June 10, 2004. 12 ACORN member interview June 18, 2004 (respondent #2 and #1). 13 SEIU Local 880 member interview June 16, 2004 (respondent #2); Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) member interview July 28, 2004. 14 SEIU Local 880 member interview June 16, 2004, (respondent #2); ACORN member interviews June 16 and 21, 2004. 15 Worker interview April 23, 2004.

Worker interview May 5, 2004. The concept of workers garnering psychological, instead of material, benefits is akin to the idea of a psychological wage. However, I do not use this term here because, as originally conceived by Du Bois (1935) and later popularized by Roediger (1999), it refers specifically to the psychological benefits garnered by the white working class on account of their race. 18 Unlike the actors in rational choice paradigms that are driven by cost-benefit calculations and material incentives, many people are drawn to protest for its mental and emotional rewards. For example, many black civil rights protestors participated to gain dignity in their lives through struggle and moral expression, not necessarily because they expected to gain equal rights from that struggle (Jasper 1998:417, referencing Bell). 19 Worker interviews May 7 and August 10, 2004. 20 Worker interviews August 3, 12 and 4, 2004. 21 ACORN member interview June 21, 2004; ACORN member/staff interview June 7 (respondent #2); ONE member interview July 15, 2004. 22 CCH member interview July 28, 2004. 23 SEIU Local 880 member interview June 16, 2004 (respondent #2); CCH member interview July 28, 2004. 24 ACORN member/staff interviews June 21 and 24 (respondent #1), 2004; ONE member interview July 15, 2004. 25 Union organizers are often wary of launching campaigns where workers grievances are primarily material or economic, since management can address such concerns relatively easily thus undermining unionization efforts. It is much more difficult for managers to transform workers perception of whether or not they are being treated with dignity and respect, and so campaigns that revolve around such issues are seen to be more stable and enduring.
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