Social Terms Dictionary

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SOCIAL TERM: Μποϋκοτάζ / Boycotts
APPROVED DEFINITIONS FOR TERM: 1
TERM TYPE: Theoretical
DEFINITION (1): «In a boycott, one or more parties attempt to achieve certain goals by urging individuals to refrain from purchasing certain goods or using certain public services. Unlike other forms of action utilized by social movements, such as demonstrations and other unconventional activities, boycotts aim to activate the political agency embedded in consumption practices, by stimulating individuals to use marketplace means to achieve what may or may not be marketplace ends. Although often used to serve the economic objectives of consumers, such as lower prices or higher quality goods, boycotts have also been widely employed to achieve political goals by social movements of different types».
DEFINITION TYPE: Nominal
DEFINITION WRITER: Νίκος Σερντεδάκις
REFERENCE: Forno, Francesca. 2013. «Boycotts». In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements. Edited by Snow, D., della Porta, D., Klandermans, B., and McAdam D. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
SOCIAL TERM: Κατηγορικά δίκτυα / Category networks (catnets)
APPROVED DEFINITIONS FOR TERM: 1
TERM TYPE: Theoretical
DEFINITION (1): The expression “catnet” merges two distinct concepts, “categories” and “networks.” It was forged by Harrison White in the context of his attempt to develop an approach to the study of social structure that departed from the Parsonian view of attitudes and values as the driving forces behind patterns in human behavior. Alternatively, and also distancing himself from purely interactionist views of structure, White proposed that the building blocks of social structure be collectivities constituted by the intersection of specific patterns of interaction and categorical traits, on which boundary definition could be founded (White H.C. 2008. «Notes on the constituents of social structure. Social Relations 10, class taught in spring 1965». Sociologica 1, doi: 10.2383/26576. 2008). While the concept was not conceived with problems of collective action primarily in mind, it became popular in that particular field through Charles Tilly’s From Mobilization to Revolution (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. 1978). There, Tilly argued extensively, in explicit criticism of deterministic, macro-structural accounts of collective action, that the presence of specific social traits within a population, associated with specific types of inequality and discrimination, is not sufficient cause of collective action. To the contrary, this depends on the presence of dense flows of interaction between actors sharing specific categorical traits. Although this basic idea actually inspired a large part of Tilly’s work, it re-emerged most forcefully in the last phase of his life, when Tilly (2005, Identities, Boundaries & Social Ties. Paradigm, Boulder, CO.) devoted considerable attention to the social mechanisms lying behind categorization processes. Whether articulated in relation to class, trade, gender, nationality, religion, and so on, the emergence of social boundaries is reflected in both social relations and social representations (the two mutually constituting each other).
DEFINITION TYPE: Nominal
DEFINITION WRITER: Νίκος Σερντεδάκις
REFERENCE: Diani, Mario. 2013. «Catnets.» In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements. Edited by Snow, D., della Porta, D., Klandermans, B., and McAdam D. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
SOCIAL TERM: Γνωστική απελευθέρωση / Cognitive liberation
APPROVED DEFINITIONS FOR TERM: 1
RELATED TERMS: Συγκρουσιακή συλλογική δράση/Contentious collective action
TERM TYPE: Theoretical
DEFINITION (1): «The concept of cognitive liberation was introduced by McAdam (1982. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency. University of Chicago Press, Chicago) as one of the three central causal factors in his formulation of “political process theory.” The term refers to the process by which members of some aggrieved group fashion the specific combination of shared understandings that are thought to undergird emergent collective action. In particular, McAdam (1982: 51) argues that “before collective [action] can get under way, people must collectively define their situations as unjust and subject to change through group action” (emphasis added). Thus it is the combination of perceived injustice and collective efficacy that is held to be the subjective linchpin of movement activity.» (McAdam 2013).
DEFINITION TYPE: Nominal
DEFINITION WRITER: Νίκος Σερντεδάκις
REFERENCE: McAdam, Doug. 2013. «Cognitive liberation». In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements. Edited by Snow, D., della Porta, D., Klandermans, B., and McAdam D. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
SOCIAL TERM: Θεωρία μετάδοσης / Contagion theory
APPROVED DEFINITIONS FOR TERM: 1
RELATED TERMS: Συλλογική συμπεριφορά/Collective behavior
TERM TYPE: Theoretical
DEFINITION (1): “Scholars of collective gatherings or crowds, such as riots, protest events, and collective celebrations, have long been interested in accounting for the coordination that makes collective behavior truly collective rather than the aggregation of parallel individual behaviors. For about 75 years, from at least the time of Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd (1897) until the 1970s, one of the dominant explanations was provided by what Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian (1972) called “contagion theory” (see also the entries on Convergence/dispositional theory and Emergent norm theory). The idea of contagion conjures up the imagery of some behavioral, emotional, or ideational phenomenon spreading rapidly, uncritically, and uniformly within a collectivity, from one participant to another. People in collective gatherings or crowds, many of which are sponsored by social movements, are portrayed as behaving uniformly, intensely, and often in a fashion at odds with their usual normative behavioral patterns. Proponents of contagion theory have posited various social psychological mechanisms thought to account for the presumed rapid dissemination of a common impulse, sentiment, or behavior among participants. […] These various mechanisms are theorized as being activated in situations of social unrest, ambiguity, and uncertainty which function to reduce the individual’s critical faculty by short-circuiting the usual interpretive process between stimulus and response. This reduction of critical faculty, coupled with the supposed anonymity provided by the crowd is hypothesized to neutralize ordinary behavioral inclinations and renders the individual susceptible to uncritical acceptance of the emotions, ideas, and behaviors being communicated or called forth.” (Snow 2013).
DEFINITION TYPE: Nominal
DEFINITION WRITER: Νίκος Σερντεδάκις
REFERENCE: Snow, David. 2013. “Contagion Theory”. In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements. Edited by Snow, D., della Porta, D., Klandermans, B., and McAdam D. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
SOCIAL TERM: Μεταστροφή / Conversion
APPROVED DEFINITIONS FOR TERM: 1
TERM TYPE: Theoretical
DEFINITION (1): “Conversion, as the concept is used in the social sciences, is usually applied to joining a religious group, although the concept has considerable overlap with issues concerning recruitment and participation in other types of social movements. Recent conversion research in the area of sociology of religion has focused mainly on the question of how and why thousands of young people joined New Religious Movements (NRMs), even if temporarily. The early conversion research on NRMs usually was informed by traditional models of conversion that were quite individualistic, psychological, and deterministic in orientation. Such approaches assumed that something was wrong with a person if they converted to a religious group, and the approach also ignored historical and sociological considerations, as well as any notion of active agency and volition on the part of the individual choosing to participate in a religious group. […] An important way out of this conundrum was furnished by John Lofland, a doctoral student at UC Berkeley working under Rodney Stark. […] Included in the model are elements that are combined in a “value-added” manner, but not strictly chronologically. The first three elements are “predisposing characteristics,” while the last four are designated “situational factors.” 1. Long-term felt tension or strain by the individual 2. Possession of a “religious” rhetoric and problem-solving perspective by the individual 3. Self-definition by the person as a religious seeker 4. “Turning point” reached 5. Development of affective bonds between preconvert and group members 6. Weakened affective bonds with those outside the group 7. Intensive (usually communal) interaction with group members, making the convert a “deployable agent” […] It is noteworthy that Lofland himself changed his perspective considerably over the years, and began to direct his students, such as Roger Straus, to study “how individuals go about changing themselves” using NRMs as vehicles of change. Straus and others, including this author, have attempted to develop more full explanations of the conversion process that assumes the convert is an individual with volition who has decided to experiment with a new belief system and ethic, even if only for a short period of time, as they develop a “conversion career.’” (Snow 2013)
DEFINITION TYPE: Nominal
DEFINITION WRITER: Νίκος Σερντεδάκις
REFERENCE: Snow, David. 2013. “Conversion and new religious movements”. In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements. Edited by Snow, D., della Porta, D., Klandermans, B., and McAdam D. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.

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