EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Social movements and exchanges: Sketch of a theory

Nicolás M Somma

Rationality and Society, 2021, vol. 33, issue 4, 480-511

Abstract: Using social exchange theory, this article presents a new theory for understanding the strategic choices made by social movement leaders—the “movement exchanges†theory. It looks at how leaders engage in exchanges of valued rewards with constituencies, institutional political players, bystander publics, and voluntary organizations. Leaders receive from these players important rewards (like committed activists, political leverage, and resources) for achieving movement goals. In turn, leaders make strategic choices (expressed in frames, tactics, targets, and claims) that other players find rewarding, favoring persistent exchanges across time. By considering movements’ simultaneous exchanges with several players, the theory makes sense of choices that remain puzzling for major movement theories. It also blends strategic behavior with culture (in the form of utopias, ideology, and emotions) but does not require the maximizing assumption of the homo economicus. I use the case of the contemporary Chilean student movement to illustrate the theory.

Keywords: Exchange theory; social movements; sociological theory; student movements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10434631211035198 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:33:y:2021:i:4:p:480-511

DOI: 10.1177/10434631211035198

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Rationality and Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:33:y:2021:i:4:p:480-511