Dan J Wang Assistant Professor Columbia Business School The Emergence of Organizations and Markets Conference Radcliffe Institute Harvard University June 29July 1 The Autocatalysis Recipe Ingredient List ID: 556406
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Slide1
Recombination and Novelty in Social Protest
Dan J. WangAssistant ProfessorColumbia Business SchoolThe Emergence of Organizations and Markets ConferenceRadcliffe Institute, Harvard UniversityJune 29-July 1Slide2
The Autocatalysis Recipe
Ingredient List:Disparate actors/resources/social domainsRelationships between previously separate social domainsDirections:Stir? (and hope that new actors bump into one another?)Slide3
Action-oriented autocatalysis
Not a theory based on Brownian motionActors are purposive and reactiveNew relationships forged in response to changes to external environmentSlide4
Open empirical questions
What is novelty?How do we measure novelty?When does tipping occur?Slide5
Tactical innovation in social movements:
The coevolution of the tools and content of protestSlide6
Tactical innovation
Where do innovations in protest tactics come from?In what kinds of protest events can we observe tactical innovation?Slide7
Tactical innovation as autocatalytic inputs and outputs
Actors cross boundaries to forge new relationshipsNew relationships leads to interactions that transform resources into novel ideas, tools, organizational formsActors realign themselves based on these new resources
External changes prompts actor boundary-crossing againSlide8
Past explanations of tactical innovation
Historical changes in political authority and technology (Tilly 1976, 1986, Tarrow
1995)
Introduction of new cultural frames
(Snow and
Benford
1992)
Necessity due to movement-opponent dynamics
(
McAdam
1983)
Professionalization of movements through SMOs and other formal organizations
(
McCammon
2003, Taylor and Van Dyke 2008)Slide9
Our perspective
Tactical innovation as both premeditated and endogenously emergentThe protest event
as crucible of tactical innovation
New tactics (or the novel repurposing of tactics) are
realized
at protest events
In what types of protest events is tactical innovation more likely to occur?Slide10
Tactical innovation as an autocatalytic process
D
ifferent movement sectors protest together
Knowledge sharing at protest staging and planning
Recombination of tactics fashions new weapons for protest
New movement identities forged around new tools of protest
Realignment of movement sectors
External ShockSlide11
Tactical innovation as an autocatalytic process
Non-violent Civil Rights movement allies with peace movement
Labor Movement and Civil Rights Movement brought together
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955), Memphis Sanitation Strike (1968)
Development of “Sit-In” from “Sit-Down Strike”; used alongside boycotts, demonstrations
Civil rights movement split between violent and non-violent factions
Vietnam War
Peace movement and Civil rights movement brought togetherSlide12
Women’s movement
Peace movement
Environmental movement
Civil Rights movement
1995Slide13
1966
Peace movement
Civil Rights movementSlide14
1976
Environmental movement
Peace movement
Civil Rights movementSlide15
1986
Women’s movement
Peace movement
Civil Rights movement
Environmental movementSlide16
Novel recombinations as tactical innovation
“Intermingling” of older tactics with newer tactics (
Tarrow
2011: 41)
“Creatively
using familiar” tactics
by “combining them in new ways” (Morris 1993: 634)
Boycotts, sit-ins, strikes, marches contemporaneously deployed in Birmingham 1963Slide17
Novel recombination of tactics
The greater the dissimilarity between the claims of a protest event, the more likely the event will exhibit a novel recombination of tactics.
Dissimilarity in claims = (movement) boundary-spanning protest event
Creativity and innovation is more likely when diverse resources are accessible
(
Ahuja
2000, Powell, et al 1996, Padgett and McLean 2006, Fleming, et al 2007, Benet-Martinez, et al 2008, Burt 2004)
Certain tactics associated with certain movements
(Tilly 1997)
Overlap in movements creates overlap in tactical repertoires Slide18
Protest Event
Women’s Movement
Peace Movement
Labor MovementSlide19
Linkages within one set of domains (claims – the content of protest)
creates innovation in another (tactics – the tools of protest)Slide20
Dynamics of Collective Action Dataset
23,000 protest events gathered from The New York Times between 1960 and 1995
For each event, coders identified
tactics
(up to 4) used
and
claims
made (up to 4)
Size of protest, violence, report-specific features, presence of police, counterdemonstrators, social movement organizations
(
www.dynamicsofcollectiveaction.com
)Slide21
Finding 1: New tactics are more likely to appear in the peripheral protest eventsSlide22
Drunk Driving
Anti-Afghanistan War
(1979)
Anti-Police Brutality against Native AmericansSlide23
New tactics appear in protest events with
more peripheral claims.Slide24
Finding 2: Novel tactical recombination is more likely to occur in protest events that combine dissimilar claimsSlide25
Outcome Variable: New Recombinations of Tactics
Measurement
: Protest event contained new recombination of tactics not observed previously in data = 1Slide26
Independent Variable: Claim Dissimilarity
Assumption: Claims are more similar to one another if they have been often paired together in past protest events
Protest events with claims that have never been paired together in the past represent (movement) boundary-spanning, truly multi-issue protests
Slide27
Independent Variable: Boundary-Spanning Protest Event
Average shortest path length among each pair of claims in a protest eventFor each protest event, collect path lengths between claims in each possible pairing
Based on claim pairing network up to time of protest event
Claims in different components coded as length of geodesic + 1 [i.e., longest shortest path length]Slide28
1992
2100: Civil Rights for Disabled1344:
Prisoner’s Rights
1600:
Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights
1604:
Same-Sex Domestic Partnership
LegislationSlide29
Civil Rights and Peace Movement collaboration
Peace and Women’s movement collaboration
Emergence of identity movementsSlide30
Protest events with
higher dissimilarity among their claims (spanning movements) are more likely to have novel recombinations of tactics.Slide31
What do novel recombinations of tactics look like?
Most novel “pairings” of tactics consist of two unpopular tactics.
Few novel “pairings” contain one popular and one unpopular tactic.
Avg. popularity of two tactics in novel pairing
Difference in popularity between two tactics in novel pairing (normalized)Slide32
What is the mechanism?
How do disparate claims bring forth novel recombinations of tactics?Do multiple groups from different movements come together at protest events?
Compare single-actor protest events and multi-actor protest events
Finding
: Multi-issue events more likely to result in novel
recombinations
of tactics if only one organizational actor is involved Slide33
Lessons for Emergence
Innovation = Novel recombination of tactics (observed)Invention = Realignment of movement alliances (implicitly observed)
Spillovers in one domain leads to innovation in another
Domains can be conceptually discrete, but in analytically, they do not have to be
Autocatalysis explains the persistence of tactical innovation