Tag Archives: Social Movements

Paradise Lost? Age Dependence in the Mortality of American Communes

Theorists agree that the risk of folding changes as organizations age, but there is little consensus as to the general form or generative processes of age-dependent mortality. This paper investigates four such processes (maturation, senescence, legitimation, and obsolescence), which have been taken as competing accounts. Using two analytical levers – elaborating on time shapes of these processes and distinguishing aging of organizations from aging of their templates (designs) – this paper differentiates these four processes and tests them jointly. Analysis of mortality rates for American communes from 1609 to 1965 strongly supports the proposed effects of maturation and senescence at the organization level and legitimation at the level of organizational templates. Results give weaker evidence that obsolescence of templates influenced mortality and that environmental drift exacerbated obsolescence.

Kitts, James A. “Paradise Lost? Age Dependence in the Mortality of American Communes” Social Forces. 87(3): 1193-1222, March 2009.

Mobilizing in Black Boxes: Social Networks and Social Movement Organizations

Recent research has focused on the role of social networks in facilitating individuals’ participation in protest and social movement organizations. This paper elaborates three currents of microstructural explanation, based on information, identity, and exchange. In evaluating these perspectives, the paper compares their robustness to multivalence, the tendency for social ties to inhibit as well as promote participation. Considering two dimensions of multivalence – the value of the social tie and the direction of social pressure – this paper discusses problems of measurement and interpretation in network analysis of movement participation.

Kitts, James A. “Mobilizing in Black Boxes: Social Networks and Social Movement Organizations” 
Mobilization: An International Journal, 5(2): 241-257, October 2000.

Analyzing Communal Life Spans: A Dynamic Structural Approach

Social scientists have used two lenses to analyze the births and deaths of communes. A structural lens examines the effects of organizational structure on collective longevity. A contextual lens examines variation in populations of communes over time, measuring relationships between utopian “waves” and broader social and economic cycles. This paper discusses contributions and limitations of both perspectives and proposes a synthesis, which examines the effects of both structure and context on the viability of communes.

Kitts, James A. “Analyzing Communal Life Spans: A Dynamic Structural Approach” Communal Societies, 20: 13-25, Fall 2000.

Not in Our Backyard: Solidarity, Social Networks,and the Ecology of Environmental Mobilization

This paper explores the role of social networks in channeling individuals’ involvement in local activism. A case study of a grassroots environmental group examines variation in members’ levels of involvement, using three levels of explanation: individual attributes, strong and weak ties between members, and memberships in other organizations. After demonstrating that high- and low-level members are very similar in personal attributes, it focuses on social ties and organizational affiliations. As expected, the data suggest that an individual’s level of involvement is increased by strong ties to other members, structural similarity to other high-level members, and fewer ties to non-members. Extramovement organizational affiliations are often assumed to diminish actors’ structural availability, though empirical research in differential recruitment has generally revealed a positive effect on participation in social movements. This study addresses a microstructural explanation for the variation between competition and mutualism in a local multiorganizational field, as it shows how organizational goals condition the effect of outside affiliations on level of participation.

Kitts, James A.  “Not in Our Backyard: Solidarity, Social Networks, and the Ecology of Environmental Mobilization.” Sociological Inquiry, 69(4): 551-574, Fall 1999.