Theorizing the Role of Culture in Social Movements: Illustrated by Protests and Contentions in Modern China

摘要

This article provides an initial step toward an explanatory analysis of the role of culture in social movements. It argues that culture shapes collective actions through three ideal-typical mechanisms: as problem-solving tool-kits, as scripts, and as instincts and taken-for-granted routines. While any concrete collective actions may involve the working of all three mechanisms, the relative importance of the three mechanisms in a social movement varies with the structural conditions of a society. In particular, actors in poorly organized social movements are more likely to follow certain cultural scripts or even their culturally embedded emotions and instincts, while actors in a well-organized movement are more able to take the cultural repertoire as a tool-kit to pursue the targeted benefits. This distinction sets social movements under Western democracies apart from many collective actions under more repressive regimes with poorly organized society.