Master Frames and Counter‐Hegemony: Political Sensibilities in Contemporary Social Movements*

Abstract

En se fondant sur l'analyse de données recueillies lors d'une série d'entrevues de 212 militants issus de divers groupes d'activistes, les auteurs examinent comment les nouveaux mouvements sociaux abordent les problèmes politiques de notre époque. Après avoir énuméré les principales façons de définir l'injustice et d'exprimer l'idéal social chez les personnes interrogées, ils tentent de déceler une pensée commune a tous les groupes, pensée fondée sur le partage d'une même idée de la justice sociale. À la lumière de cette analyse, on mesure ensuite la viabilité des mouvements luttant contre l'ordre établi; une théorie génerate sur leur influence dans la société contemporaine est ensuite esquissée. Based on an analysis of in‐depth interview data from 212 activists in a variety of social movements, this paper considers the ways in which diverse movements' discourses frame political issues. After identifying primary injustice frames and social visions articulated by sample respondents, the authors assess the plausibility of a cross‐movement unity based on shared “master frames,” i.e., common understandings of injustice and a common social vision. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of their analysis for the viability of counter‐hegemonic politics and for theorizations of contemporary social movements. “I would suggest… (i) that power is co‐extensive with the social body; there are no spaces of primal liberty between the meshes of the network; (ii) that relations of power are interwoven with other kinds of relations … for which they play at once a conditioning and a conditioned role; (iii) that these relations don't take the sole form of prohibition and punishment, but are of multiple forms; (iv) that their interconnections delineate general conditions of domination, and … one should not assume a massive and primal condition of domination, a binary structure with ‘dominators’ on one side and ‘dominated’ on the other, but rather a multiform production of relations of domination which are partially susceptible of integration into overall strategies; (v) that power relations do indeed ‘serve’, but not at all because they are “in the service of an economic interest taken as primary, rather because they are capable of being utilised in strategies; (vi) that there are no relations of power without resistances; the latter are all the more real and effective because they are formed right at the point where relations of power are exercised.” —Michel Foucault, “Power and strategies” (1980)

Keywords

Affiliated Institutions

• University of British Columbia CA
• University of Victoria CA

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