Key Social Movement Concepts
The process by which a group acquires collective control over the resources needed for collective action.
What is Tilly's concept of "mobilization"?
Persuasive appeal to credibility, often drawing on expertise.
What is ethos?
A rhetorical move in an op-ed that cites sexual assault statistics and notes: "If President Daniels really cared about crime, he would do something about the most common form crime on campus, rather than form a private police force."
What is an appeal to logos?
Figuring out what something means, why it is as it is and does what it does.
What is analysis?
Original documents and objects that were created at the time under study.
What are primary sources?
When multiple social movements or social groups engage in sustained protest clustered in time and spanning a wide geographical boundary.
What are "waves of protest"?
The basic move in academic writing, according to Graff and Birkenstein.
What is "They Say/I Say"?
Printing press, telegram, television, radio, and social media.
What are communication technologies that have transformed social movements?
(1) Define your topic and say why it matters.
(2) Indicate your method or approach to the topic.
(3) Provide necessary background or context.
(4) Offer the working thesis your paper develops
What are the features of good introductions?
A pamphlet written to introduce JHU freshmen to the problems and protests at Hopkins.
What is the "Disorientation Guide"?
Examples include inequality between countries, inequality within countries, climate change, and threats to physical safety.
What are "system-level problems"?
A part of a paper that incorporates elements from multiple sources or cases, creating a "whole" that is "more than the sum of its parts."
What is a synthetic discussion?
A protest sign that says "Stop Killing My Brothers", for example.
What is a visual appeal to pathos?
A transformation of your argument through multiple encounters with evidence.
What is an evolving thesis?
Where a tax on WhatsApp sparked protests in 2019.
What is Lebanon?
Pre-capitalist populations, landless peasants and casual laborers, new manufacturing workers, and the middle classes.
What are new social forces driving anti-capitalist resistance today, according to Therborn?
Flow, narrative, chronology, and cause-and-effect, for example.
What are conventions of event summaries?
A term referring to the reconfiguration of movements and publics through the incorporation of digital technologies and connectivity, according to Tufekci.
What are "networked protests"?
Linking your thesis to your evidence through "signposting," for example.
What is strong argumentation?
Dr. Payne's four questions that will help you read like a social scientist.
What are: "What does the author want to know? Why does the author want to know it? What does the author think the answer is? And how does the author arrive at this answer?"?
Karatasli (et. al.)'s three types of labor unrest.
What are new working classes in formation (Marx-type), old working classes being unmade (Polanyi-type), and workers bypassed by capital ("Third Type")?
Having the skills to succeed in writing regardless of context. In other words, the primary goal of this class.
What is "writing agility"?
The two major types of bias in newspaper reporting of social movements.
What are "description" and "selection"?
The two functions of evidence.
What is "to test for truth or believability" and "to establish a thing as true or believable"?
The name of Dr. Payne's cat.
What is Sunny?