Organizing resisting activities in on-line social spaces: regulation, communities, materiality. The case of a citizen’s movement defending undocumented migrant pupils

Philippe Eynaud (), Damien Mourey () and Nathalie Raulet-Croset ()
Additional contact information
Philippe Eynaud: IAE Paris - Sorbonne Business School
Damien Mourey: IAE Paris - Sorbonne Business School
Nathalie Raulet-Croset: IAE Paris - Sorbonne Business School

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The formal and structural components of social movement organizations are rather elusive and scarce: their militants explicitly emphasize the egalitarian, horizontal, democratic and transparent way of making decisions and taking action. They also like to pride themselves on not being similar to any existing organizational form (Rao et al., 2000), and they often vow to disappear when their mission has been fulfilled. Moreover, in this day and age, most social movements resort to easy-to-use on-line technology, and their members become on-line users. The on-line nature of the organization has reinforced the trend toward lightweight formal organizational features in social movements, and the lack of formal rules. These flexible organizations are highly responsive and deliver fast mobilization. The quest for massive and far-reaching mobilization is a powerful strategy for advocacy and action but goes hand in hand with significant risks of losing control. Mission drift, push for more powerful governance structures, anarchic growth, controversies within the movement and the maintenance of pluralism among members are the main risks linked to an open social movement, where almost anyone can become a member through on-line registration to any existing e-mail list (Kavada, 2009). Yet, these self-proclaimed ‘no-rules' organizations cannot thrive and stay true to themselves without rules, even if the latter are informal and invisible from the outside.

Keywords: Social Movement; Local Cell; Social Space; Founding Member; Social Regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in François-Xavier de Vaujany, Nathalie Mitev, Giovan Francesco Lanzara, Anouk Mukherjee. Materiality, Rules and Regulation, Palgrave, pp.154-174, 2015

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:hal:journl:halshs-02065532

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().