Contentious Conversation - )

Social Research, Fall, 1998 by Charles Tilly

If any of the elements--worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment--visibly falls to zero, a social movement loses credibility. Above the zero threshold, however, a high value on one element compensates a low value on another: people who show strong signs of commitment (for example by taking life-threatening risks) need not be so numerous as those who merely show up for a rally. The notable presence of worthiness in the form of priests, dignitaries, prize winners, and victims can easily make up for a certain disunity of voiced aims among other participants. The relative weight of worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment defines rather different kinds of movements.

What's going on? Social movements link two complementary activities: assertions of identity and statements of demands. The two activities' relative salience varies from one phase of social movement activity to another as well as from one kind of social movement to another. As compared with strikes, revolutions, coups d'etat, and many other forms of contentious politics, nevertheless, social movements stand out for their emphasis on identity assertion. They emphasize public assertion of identities whose possessors are worthy, unified, numerous, and committed. They do so because social movements grew up in the nineteenth century as means by which people currently excluded from political power could band together and claim that power-holders should attend to their interests, or the interests they represented. Otherwise, the actions of social movement participants signaled, they had the capacity and will to disrupt and alter routine political life. Recognition of their claimed identities as wronged workers, dispossessed peasants, or persecuted religious minorities constituted them as political actors, but also drew them into bargaining collectively with existing holders of power. That stress on identity assertion persists in social movements, especially in their earlier stages, to the present day. Social movements continue to assert the right to respect and political voice of indigenous peoples, gays, conservative Christians, unborn children, laboratory animals, and even trees--the latter three categories through the mediation of their self-designated protectors.

Identity assertion in social movements has clear counterparts in everyday conversation. Effective conversation establishes in whose names and in what capacities the parties are speaking: Are we exchanging news as friends, neighbors, or business associates? Do I recognize you as a certified expert on our topic and myself as a grateful member of your lay audience? Are you speaking for your political constituency or simply on your own? Are we strangers on a train? The universal requirement for establishment of identities does not preclude error, dissimulation, contestation, or double entendre concerning the relationship among the parties. A friend can turn out to be a spy, while a sterile conversation for public consumption can carry erotic, subversive, or satirical overtones that bespeak a second relationship among the interlocutors. Conversation still proceeds on the basis of defined identities, and often centers on establishing just what those identities are.