Artikelen

Transnational ties that bind. The Gandhian repertoire's passage from India to the American civil rights movement

Auteurs

  • Chabot,Sean

Trefwoorden:

Social movements, Collective action, Civil rights movements, Separatism, Nonviolence, Diffusion, United States of America, India

Samenvatting

How did the Gandhian repertoire of collective action travel from the Indian independence movement to the American civil rights movement? Why did it take more than three decades before African-American activists adopted and implemented Gandhi's style of protest? Since neither historians nor social scientists have developed convincing answers to these questions, this article proposes a new theoretical framework for studying transnational diffusion between social movements. It argues that (1) diffusion items may be dynamic and malleable rather than finished products; (2) receiving critical communities face interpretive obstacles produced by mainstream opinion leaders and media; (3) receiving critical communities can overcome these obstacles through mental dislocation and physical relocation of the diffusion item; and (4) dislocation and relocation take place in the context of two diffusion mechanisms -- brokerage and collective appropriation. This theoretical framework not only allows for better answers to the two specific questions above, but should also enable more sophisticated explanations for other cases of transnational diffusion between social movements. 66 References. Adapted from the source document.

Biografie auteur

Chabot,Sean

Gepubliceerd

2002-09-01

Nummer

Sectie

Artikelen