Cherry
Movement Cultures, Structures, and Agency
1
Movement Cultures as Social Structures: Agency Through Tactical and Strategic Choices in
the Animal Rights Movement in France and the United States
Elizabeth Cherry
University of Georgia
## email not listed ##
Paper Submitted for the 2007 ASA Conference
ABSTRACT
Most social movement scholars attribute activists’ choices of strategies and tactics to rational
decisions based on personal preferences, past experiences, or opponents’ abilities to sanction. But
these explanations cannot account for instances when activists knowingly choose strategies and
tactics that do not seem to offer the likeliest chance of success. What can account for these seemingly
irrational choices—why would activists purposefully avoid likely successful strategies and tactics? I
address this question through a comparative study of the animal rights movements in France and the
United States, based on interviews and participant observation with activists in both countries.
Activists in the U.S. exhibit more tactical pragmatism than French activists, who engage in “tactical
stubbornness”—sometimes refusing tactics and strategies that have proven successful for others. I
argue that these choices are not irrational, and surprisingly are not based on cultural or structural
constraints external to the movement. Instead, they are indicative of the constraints placed on
activists by the cultural structures within the animal rights movement itself. This meso-level analysis
adds a new level to studies of tactical choices, and also provides a comparative perspective to an
empirical case of cultural structures and agency.
KEYWORDS
Animal Rights, Agency, Cultural Structures, Social Movement
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