Sociology Compass 3/3 (2009): 459474, 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2009.00214.

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Blackwell
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April
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2009 Blackwell
of Social Movements
Publishing Ltd

Political Elites and the Culture of Social

Movements
Jenny Irons*
Hamilton College

Abstract

While sociologists have paid a great deal of attention to how political elites matter
for the emergence and development of social movements, they have focused less
explicitly on how political elites matter for the culture of social movements. This
essay reviews work that directly and indirectly addresses this relationship, showing
how political elites matter for various aspects of movement culture, like collective
identity and framing. It also reviews literature that suggests how movement culture
comes to impact political elites. The essay concludes by drawing from very recent
scholarship to argue that to best understand political elites and the culture of social
movements, we need to think about culture and structure as intertwined and to
understand how relations matters in the construction of meaning.

Introduction
In late August 1963, over 200,000 Americans marched toward the Lincoln
Memorial in Washington, DC, for the civil rights march that would go
down in history as, simply, The March on Washington. Black leaders of
prominent civil rights organizations had joined together to organize the
march and urge Congress to pass President John F. Kennedys civil rights
bill. Yet, as the crowd listened to opening music and early remarks, the
scene behind the memorial was tense. Some of the marchs leaders were
insisting that John Lewis, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committees
(SNCC) representative, take the sting out of the speech he had prepared
to give. The night before, advance copies had been proudly distributed
by those who had helped Lewis with the speech. Even before Lewis went
to bed, however, he removed his questioning of the merits of patience at
the request of the Catholic Archbishop of DC, who had threatened to
pull out of the program if Lewis gave the speech as written. Now, at the
moment of the march, it was reported that Robert Kennedy, the U.S.
Attorney General, and Burke Marshall, head of the U.S. Department of
Justices Civil Rights Division, had each expressed concern. Roy Wilkins,
national president of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP), was furious with Lewis, and a small committee
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460 Political Elites and the Culture of Social Movements

of the marchs leaders formed to decide what to do with the young SNCC
leader. Lewiss words did not mesh with the message the event organizers
were trying to convey, and Lewis was forced to remove phrases and words
viewed as too militant. When Lewis ultimately gave his speech before the
cheering crowd, he did not question which side the federal government
was on, call the Presidents bill too little too late, or urge activists to march
non-violently through the South as Sherman had violently marched during
the Civil War. Radical black leaders criticized Lewis for sanitizing his
speech Malcom X used the story of this backstage jostling to call the event
a Farce on Washington but Lewis felt his speech still had bite and
established and conveyed [SNCCs] firm and angry position on the hard
issues of the day (Lewis 1998, pp. 227 and 230).
The alteration of John Lewis speech reflected not only SNCCs position
as the rebellious child of the civil rights movement, but it also reflected the
power of elites to shape social movement culture. More specifically, it points
to the fact that individuals, often as leaders of organizations, have significant
power to mold and respond to movement messages. Members of the Kennedy
administration and a powerful religious figure whose participation gave
symbolic weight to the march had weighed in and been heard. Their
concerns, along with the criticism of moderate civil rights leaders, forced
Lewis to alter his message. To be allowed to speak before the massive crowd,
he had to choose words that would resonate with the dominant political
culture and remove words that might alienate important allies. These allies
were important not only because they had the power to create and pass
legislation, but also because they gave the movement legitimacy with the
larger American public. The support of a white Catholic Archbishop and
white political elites signaled that the civil rights movement was not marginal but central to the practice and meaning of American democracy. On
the other hand, while Lewis toned down the militancy of his message for
the march, the actions and words of political elites were ultimately altered
by the culture of the civil rights movement. Explicitly, racist political
campaigns became taboo, even in the deep Southern states, and the
message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. embodied in his own March on
Washington speech became part of the dominant American political
culture. However, in yet another twist on the relationship between the
culture of social movements and political elites, Kings message of colorblindness would ultimately be co-opted by conservative political forces who
would downplay the continued relevance of race and racism in American
society. In short, the relationship of movement cultures and political elites
is not a simple one.
One could say that social movements exist both because of and in spite
of elites, the power holders who directly and indirectly shape state action
and policies. Resource mobilization theory, especially its early formulations,
held that social movements emerge when they acquire the support of political
and economic elites who offer alliances, money, leadership, and other crucial
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Political Elites and the Culture of Social Movements

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resources (McCarthy and Zald 1977). Political process theory counted elite
allies and divisions among elites as critical means through which the political
opportunity for movement emergence might develop (McAdam 1999 [1982]).
On the other hand, movements also emerge even when political elites, or
large factions of political elites, are resistant to significant change (Noonan
1995). While sociological scholars have examined these structural dimensions
of the elite/social movement relationship, they have less often asked how
the cultural dynamics of movements are related to political elites. Recently,
sociologists have noted that studies of movement culture should push beyond
their typical focus on internal dynamics to examine the relationship between
movement culture and the external environment. Additionally, others have
urged sociologists to see the relationship between structure and culture as
intertwined and inseparable. Finally, some have noted that by focusing on
the structural dimensions of movement dynamics, scholars have drifted far
away from conceptualizing political elites as individuals who play significant
roles in shaping and responding to movement culture and strategy. In the
spirit of these calls, this essay reviews work that both explicitly and implicitly
addresses the relationship between movement culture and political elites.
It assesses extant sociological literature using two broad questions as an
organizational framework: How is the development and maintenance of
movement culture shaped because of and in spite of political elites? In
turn, how do movement cultures impact political elites? Before delving into
these questions, I briefly address how the key concepts of this essay are
used. The concluding section of this essay portrays the relationship between
political elites and movement culture as a reciprocal, complex one and
suggests that new directions in recent scholarship provide the best framework for developing our understanding of it.
Key concepts: social movements, culture, and political elites
One of the most commonly used conceptualizations of a social movement
is that offered by Sidney Tarrow (2007 [1998]), who defines a social movement as an organized, collective effort that joins together individuals who
share common goals in sustained action against authorities. Authority for
Tarrow, as well as for other scholars (McAdam 1999 [1982]; McAdam et al.
2001), often means political or state authority. However, others point out
that movements may target other kinds of authorities, like cultural or
religious authorities (Snow 2004), or they may be focused on developing
individual or institutional empowerment (Taylor 1996; Armstrong 2002).
Furthermore, while movements are typically conceptualized as developing
outside of institutions, sometimes, activism develops within institutions
(Katzenstein 1998). The movements that are the focus of this paper are
primarily those that emerge among those who lack access to political
decision-making channels; thus, they target the state and political elites,
at least indirectly.
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462 Political Elites and the Culture of Social Movements

While movements often seek to gain access to the political system or

material rights and resources (Andrews 1997, 2001; McAdam 1982), they also
invoke struggles over culture (Gamson 1988). In the 1980s, scholars of social
movements began to pay more attention to how culture mattered for social
movements, particularly through frame analysis (Snow et al. 1986) and studies
of new social movements (Melucci 1989; Laraa et al. 1994). At a very
broad level, culture is a meaning-making process (Spillman 2002). It is
created through institutions and human interactions; it does not arise from
thin air. Culture is also shared, embodied in forms like values, norms, beliefs,
language, rituals, and identity. Culture plays a central role for social movements. The creation of meaning is important for how social movements
define problems, advocate ways to solve them, and recruit members, often
through the cultural elements David Snow and his colleagues call frames
(Snow et al. 1986). Culture is also valuable in creating a shared sense of
identity for movement participants, which is important for creating a sense
of solidarity and efficacy among those who often risk much to try and
bring about change (for an overview, see Polletta and Jasper 2001).
Rhys Williams notes that most studies of social movement culture have
tended to focus largely on internal dynamics, or the norms, beliefs, symbols,
identities, stories, and the like that produce solidarity, motivate participants, and maintain collective action, rather than on how movement cultures
are situated within particular external contexts (2004, p. 94). Williams asks
that scholars attend to the cultural environment of movements, or the socially
and culturally available array of symbols and meanings from which movements
can draw (2004, p. 96; Williams emphasis). Social movements, very simply,
do not develop in vacuums. They develop in environments that are bounded
by proscriptions and prescriptions that define what is appropriate and
what is not, what is powerful and what is not, what is legitimate and what
is not (Olick and Levy 1997). For movements geared toward change, this
task is especially difficult, because they often go up against authorities who
have much greater power to shape those proscriptions and prescriptions.
As conveyed in the story at the beginning of this essay, political elites do
have the power to intentionally and directly shape how movements engage
in meaning-making. In many cases, however, that power operates more
indirectly, as a constraining force of available cultural materials (Armstrong
2002, p. 195). Williams (2004, p. 103) summarizes this point as follows:
Some groups choose and some are forced to use cultural expressions that
originated with their rivals in order to achieve a place in public life.
One very important audience among the rivals movements confront is
political elites. In theories and studies of social movements, elites are often
discussed as a part of the structural context in which movements develop.
Yet, as will be discussed below, elites are important to understand not only
for structural reasons but also for cultural ones. But first, who are political
elites? Robert Putnam (1976, p. 2) opens his comparative review of the study
of political elites by noting that the question of who constitutes the political
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elite is a question one that many have asked of who rules. The answers
to this question over the years have been varied and wide-ranging; they
have included not only state actors, but also the wealthiest members of
society, religious leaders, and established and connected activists. Putnam
limits his conceptualization of political elites to those who have direct or
indirect power over outcomes, or the power to [influence] the policies
and activities of the state, or ... the authoritative allocation of values (1976,
pp. 56). Political elites, then, are actors from various institutional realms
from the state to the market who exercise power over policy outcomes,
whether they write that policy or influence those who do. While social
movements and their members may influence policy, they do not consistently
have access, and in Putnams terms, the probability that they will influence
state activities and policies is neither consistent nor strong.
Furthermore, scholars of social movements have traditionally characterized
movement activity as non-institutionalized, or as beyond the realm of the
state and those who rule (McAdam et al. 2001). Social movements generally
develop outside the system, among those who lack the ability to use institutionalized political means to gain power and resources. Recent works have
acknowledged the ways activism may take place within institutions and
have suggested that the line is not always so distinct (Katzenstein 1998). Even
more, social movement success may mean those who were once outside
the realm of institutionalized politics earn positions of direct influence, like
elected office, and become part of the elite. However, for simplicitys sake,
this essay accepts a distinction between movement actors and political elites.
It also conceptualizes political elites as those who have direct or indirect
influence over state action and policy, particularly as members of the state.
Whereas the term authority refers to the broadly defined set of actors
targeted by a movement from elected officials to local police political
elites occupy distinctly powerful positions. In short, political elites are the
power-holders who establish dominant political discourse and engage in
actions (i.e. through policy making and repression) that shape the structural
environment in which movement culture develops.
Because of political elites: elites as resource
In many cases, social movements exist because of political elites. As noted
above, both of the dominant models for understanding movements the
resource mobilization model (McCarthy and Zald 1977) and the political
process model (McAdam (1999 [1982]) envision elites as central to movement emergence and development. But, as has often been acknowledged,
these models give short shrift to factors like agency and culture (for example,
see Goodwin and Jasper 1999). McAdams political process model did
acknowledge that challengers have to subjectively define a problem as something they can collectively address and potentially change. Political elites
can create the grounds for this cognitive and cultural process through their
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464 Political Elites and the Culture of Social Movements

own division or by engaging in actions that at least symbolically open the

door for change (i.e. through policies or court rulings). In later work,
McAdam (1994) recognized that such political shifts among elites create
cultural opportunities for challengers. In other words, the meaning-making
processes of movements are, from the beginning, a response to signals given
by political elites to indicate an openness to change.
Recent research identifies a few ways that movement culture develops
because of the discourse and actions established by political elites. First,
political elites themselves, through policies and state action, create the basis
for the development of the collective identities of activists. Second, political
elites establish the discourse of political culture, or the meaning with which
movement frames must resonate. Finally, political elites may have a more
direct effect on the development of movement culture, either by laying the
groundwork for frames used in grassroots activism or by constraining how
culture is used through resource control.
States have the power to name the basis of identity for oppositional movements and other aspects of movement culture. In other words, the state, the
institutional home for political elites, plays an obvious but often ignored
role in creating movement identity: its actions create common cause and
thus an identity. (Meyer 2002, p. 13; Boudreau 2002) Classification schemes
imposed by states to institute and maintain order, and to control meaning,
establish the boundaries that mark group identity, from race to nationality
to gender (Scott 1998; Foucault 1978, 1977; Tilly 1998). Multiple studies
have shown how these categories in turn become the basis of movement
mobilization, often because they are used in policies that marginalize, repress,
or deny access to resources. Omi and Winants (1994) famous study of racial
movements shows that state policies toward racial groups serve as the basis
for mobilization of those movements; to come together as a group and
develop a shared sense of we-ness, members have to recognize that they
share a common identity. This process is explored in the works of multiple
scholars of race and ethnicity (i.e. Nagel 1986; Okamoto 2003). Scholars of
sexual identity movements have also adeptly shown that state classification
through laws and policies that designated gays and lesbians as deviant populations that deserved unequal treatment actually facilitated the process
through which gays and lesbians developed a collective sense of identity
(i.e. Armstrong 2002; Bernstein 2002).
Second, political elites establish the dominant political culture. They
not only establish the discourse with which movements must resonate, but
they also establish cultural resources from which movements can draw to
advance their goals. For example, Bernstein shows that activists promoting
gay and lesbian rights in the form of an anti-discrimination bill in Vermont
drew on an ethnic-identity frame (2002, p. 96). She says that the language
of the law provided a cultural resource for the activists to seek resonance
for their claim with a broader audience. Many other studies have produced
a similar finding: movements are more successful in advancing their ideas
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and frames when they find ways to resonate with the larger political culture
(i.e. Ellingson 1995; Babb 1997) Political elites are central in the establishment
of the ideology and discourse of the political culture, and they create
cultural opportunities for movements, even in repressive climates. Studies
of movements in authoritarian countries have found that movements do
develop in places where repression is extreme and the political opportunity
structure is not, in fact, open. Noonan (1995, p. 81) found that women living
under Pinochets repressive military regime in Chile actually subverted the
ideology of womanhood established by Pinochet and were his most visible
adversaries. Her work argues that in particularly repressive states, meaningmaking processes for movements are most successful and less likely to be
repressed when they echo state discourse.
Finally, political elites may also establish the frames that successfully generate civic activism where none existed before; as movement allies, they may
also limit directly or indirectly the way in which culture gets deployed
by movements. In terms of the first point, McCarthy (1994) shows how
relatively autonomous state actors generated a drunk driving frame in the
policy-making process. Their frame, in turn, served as a basis for mobilization by grassroots activists. They provided a legitimate and resonant way
for a movement in its early stages of mobilization to recruit massive numbers
of supporters and gain wide public appeal. However, political elites may
also constrain how culture is used in social movements. Valocchi (1996)
examines the early roots of the integrationist ideology that drove the Civil
Rights Movement and finds that this ideology became dominant not simply
because it was more resonant in the political culture, but because of organizational ties between the NAACP and elites. He argues that the movements emphasis on integration rather than black empowerment came about
largely as a result of alliances between the NAACP and white liberals and
the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s. The established and long-term
financial dominance of the NAACP among civil rights organizations, as
well as its access to political elites, enabled its voice to stand out in the
development of movement ideology.
In spite of political elites: elites as target
In his theory of power, Antonio Gramsci (1999 [1971]) felt that hegemonic
rule could be challenged by the masses who had the potential to generate
an organic understanding of their own oppression and a rationale and
strategy for ending it. Political elites are generally invested in protecting the
status quo, and when dissent from below emerged and develops, they often
try to repress or co-opt the challenge. Even acceptance of a social movements claims can mean a watering down of movement intentions. Social
movements, by definition, resist political elites. Even when their targets
are culturally based or inwardly focused, they still often challenge the
power and hegemony of political elites. This section examines how social
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466 Political Elites and the Culture of Social Movements

movements use culture to subvert power, even when they draw from the
dominant political culture, and how political elites engage in their own
meaning-making process in response to social movements.
Fantastia and Hirsch (1995, p. 145) note that social movement culture
develops in context and will reflect and sustain existing power arrangements, but they also acknowledge the fact that oppositional groups who
lack access to power often adapt to their subordination by creating cultural forms that express oppositional practices, values, and beliefs. In
other words, challenging groups may draw from existing culture a nod
to the power of existing power arrangements but also transform that
culture to advance their own identity and goals. The literature on new
social movements in particular examines how identity, as an aspect of
movement culture, develops in submerged networks, or the kinds of
spaces and conversations free from dominant group members where outsiders may develop a sense of who they are and how they will oppose
their own oppression (Melucci 1989). This dynamic is probably best analyzed in the work of political scientist James Scott (1990), who shows how
the arts of resistance develop at a level often unacknowledged by those
in power. For example, slave religion and song often expressed resistance
to slave owners, even when slave owners saw these cultural forms as
simply worshipful or harmless. Scotts work suggests that the more
oppressed a group, the more likely they are to develop oppositional cultural forms and identities in hidden ways, and often intentionally so for
their own protection. The case that Fantasia and Hirsch examine one
of the Algerian revolutions against French rule is one of a vast discrepancy in power. They conclude that, oppositional culture is generated in
and by social movements, specifically within protected havens that are
relatively isolated from the surveillance, the ideas, and the repression of
elites (1995, p. 157).
State repression can affect the content and contours of a movements
culture (Boudreau 2002). However, repression itself is something that
scholars have begun to pay more attention to as a reaction to cultural
aspects of movements. Granted, McAdams (1999 [1982]) initial formulation of political process theory recognized that the level of repression is,
at least in part, a response to movement ideology. Recently, however,
others have better clarified how the meaning-making processes of social
movements and/or elite perception of movement identity affects the process
of repression. Davenport (2005, p. 120) examines how covert intelligencegathering activities were directed against the Republic of New Africa, a
Black Nationalist organization, in Detroit, Michigan and finds that covert
repressive action was shaped by the groups tactics and some contextual
factors, like economic development, but he also found that the identity
of the challengers (in this case, their race) was a significant factor in
determining who was targeted. In an analysis of the FBIs COINTELPRO, Cunningham (2004) argues that the distance of the targets from
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taken-for-granted norms held by FBI agents (explicitly regarding things

like dress and behavior) shaped how targets were regarded and treated. In
short, the identity of movement activists, as well as their ideas, are often
just as threatening to political elites as are disruptive tactics.
The impact of movement culture on political elites
How do the cultures of social movements impact political elites? Clearly,
this is an important question to answer if we want to understand how the
cultural aspects of movements get translated into policies and/or the wider
political culture. While scholars typically focuses on structural factors (i.e.
the level of movement organization, the political opportunity structure) as
the main avenues through which movements impact society, some recent
work suggests that whether and how movement cultures impact political
elites is shaped by contextual factors and elites own perceptions.
In a study of how political elites are affected by the meaning generated
by social movements, Polletta (1998) asks how members of the U.S. Congress commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. She shows that a particular
legacy of Kings activism one that emphasizes community service and institutional politics over insurgency is most commonly represented. However, the black legislators she studied invoked this legacy at the same time
they carefully caution that it has not fully been realized. Polletta saw black
legislators as members of the political establishment and yet minority
members, [who] must negotiate the complex and competitive relations not
only with white political elites but also with black protest elites (1998,
p. 481; Pollettas emphasis). Pollettas analysis of political elite discourse
recognizes the importance of paying attention to what is not said to show
how the culture of social movements becomes part of both prescribed and
proscribed talk among political elites (also see Olick and Levy 1997 and
Buffonge 2001). One of her most important points is that how the culture
of movements in this case, how it generated an understanding of social
change gets integrated into the discourse of elites is shaped by how elites
are situated in a network of relationships with other elites, with their
own social groups, and with challengers. In this particular case, black legislators were simultaneously responsive to black protest elites, white political
elites, and their black constituents; the competing expectations of these
relations shaped the ways in which black legislators articulated Kings legacy.
In a more recent article, McCammon et al. (2007) find that both political
and cultural opportunities matter for determining whether or not a movements frames are effective. They examine factors that explain activists statelevel success in winning women the legal right to serve on juries. They
find that activists use of particular frames was more successful when those
frames resonated with the current state of legal discourse. For example,
activists were more successful when they invoked the rights and duties of
citizens as a rationale for jury service. Furthermore, when women lawmakers
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468 Political Elites and the Culture of Social Movements

were present and actively advocated womens service on juries, laws were
more likely to be passed. Their ultimate conclusion is that to win, movements have to select and use frames that resonate with the larger cultural
context, particularly legal constructs. The findings also suggest that the presence of elite allies is an important factor for generating frame resonance.
One very interesting line of work in this tradition focuses on elite perception as the key mechanism through which the culture of social movements is translated into policy. Political elites, like movement actors, also
engage in interpretive processes (McAdam 1999 [1982]). John Skrentny
(2006) acknowledges the importance of this fact by asking how the perceptions of policy elites shape social movement impact. He weds political
and cultural analysis to show that how elites perceive movements along three
key dimensions definition, morality, and threat shapes movement impact
on policy. In his case, that policy outcome is whether or not a challenging
group was included in affirmative action policy. He explains why Latinos,
American Indians, and Asian Americans were incorporated into affirmative
action policies while white ethnics were not. The key mechanism that
explains inclusion is how elites perceived a groups worthiness, which was
predicated, at least in part, on how different groups represented themselves.
Social movement actors, as meaning entrepreneurs, can affect how they
are perceived by elites. They are more successful in generating a favorable
understanding of their own definition and moral worthiness in the eyes
of elites if the claims they represent resonate with elites taken-for-granted
beliefs and/or are accompanied by a significant or perceived threat to the
social order. Skrentnys work sees the relationship between movement cultures
and political elite response as a reflexive one where there is give and take.
He notes that political elites, as part of the state, have agency, and that agency
is powerfully mediated by cultural meanings (2006, pp. 18071808). In
other words, political elites, because of their control of policy making, are
powerful interpreters of movement cultures, or of movements collective identities and frames. Movements may challenge what elites know and think,
but they have to do so in ways that do not stray too far from how elites
define groups themselves and their worthiness for inclusion in the polity
(see also McCammon et al. 2001).
Final assessment and new directions
What does this research as a whole suggest about the relationship of political
elites and the culture of social movements? Very simply, the relationship
is a reflexive one. Just as movement tactics develop in the interplay between
movements and opponents, so too does movement culture develop interactively with political elites (Fantasia and Hirsch 1995; Steinberg 2002).
Whittier (2002, p. 290) writes: Interactions between movements and external
contexts shape the content, type, and relative intensity of movement organization, collective action, collective identity, and discourse within different
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movements. In particular, she notes, it is the public confrontation with

authorities (p. 291) that makes the impact of political elites on movement
culture unavoidable. Adair (1996), in a study of antinuclear activism, points
out that once movements enter the public sphere, they lose full control
over the construction of their own identity. So begins the back and forth
process of interaction between movement culture and political elites. Sometimes, elites impact movement cultures in very direct and intentional ways,
as illustrated in the anecdote that began this article, and others times that
impact is less direct, operating as broader cultural constraints that shape how
a movements goals and messages are framed. Finally, the discourse and
meaning of movement cultures may also begin to show up in elite meaningmaking processes, and therefore state policies. In sum, the relationship is
one of give and take, but the power of elites often trumps the power of
movement cultures, especially as movements seek access to the institutionalized channels of politics.
Although extant literature addresses the relationship of political elites
and the culture of social movements, it rarely does so in an explicit way.
Furthermore, much of what we do know typically conceptualizes the role
of elites as unintentional; the literature reviewed suggests we might pay
more attention to the ways in which elites engage in intentional actions to
manipulate and respond to movement cultures. Because elites have substantial
power over the direction and nature of movement impact, it would serve
scholars well to be more attuned to the mechanisms through which movement cultures are translated into policies and expressed in the dominant
political culture. Two lines of scholarship suggest ways in which scholars
might better analyze the relationship at hand. The first recognizes that culture
and structure are less distinct concepts than often acknowledged. The second
urges more attention to how meaning-making develops in a context of
relationships where legitimacy is a key political resource.
At least part of the reason that scholars may not have explicitly queried
the relationship between political elites and the culture of social movements
is that it point in two different directions: structural versus cultural. Movement scholars have tended to analyze how structural factors (or peoples
positions in society and their relations to each other and to institutions and
organizations) are related to other structural factors, and then how cultural
factors (the stuff of meaning) are related to other cultural factors. Structure
and culture are seen as distinct. Recent scholarship is attending to culture
and social movements in a new light one that recognizes the powerful role
of culture in society and views it as inseparable from institutions and other
societal structures (Polletta 2008; Armstrong and Bernstein 2008).
For example, Polletta (1999, p. 67; see also Sewell 1992, the inspiration
for this line of thinking) points out that conceptually, the separation of
structure and culture, or seeing members of the state or the structure of
the state as entirely separate from meaning, is misleading. Rather, culture
is best seen as a symbolic dimension of all structures, institutions, and
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practices ... Culture is thus patterned and patterning; it is enabling as well

as constraining, and it is observable in linguistic practices, institutional
rules, and social rituals rather than existing only in peoples minds. Polletta
goes on to note that political elites, like those who challenge them, are
also suspended in webs of meaning (1999, p. 67). Her conceptualization
of culture, suggests more careful attention to the cultural traditions, ideological principles, institutional memories, and political taboos that guide
the behavior of both political elites and challengers (1999, p. 69). This
perspective can help us to better understand how political elites matter for
social movement emergence and framing, the shape and effect of state repression, and the wider context of relationships that frame the boundaries of
legitimacy. More specifically, it should lead us to think about how political
elites, as individuals who occupy positions of power in the political structure,
play key roles in producing dominant cultural understandings of issues and
social groups and in responding to those advanced by social movements.
A second line of scholarship calls for recognizing how relationships matter
in the construction of meaning (Whittier 2002; Boudreau 2002; Somers 1994).
This approach offers a potentially powerful way to account for how individual agency interacts with context in the relationship between political
elites and movement culture. Armstrong and Bernstein (2008) recognize
social movements as phenomena that emerge in a society where power is
distributed, enacted, and challenged across multiple institutional contexts.
While they review a range of empirical cases to illustrate their concerns
about the power of the political process model, they largely focus on gay
and lesbian activism to illustrate the application of their multi-institutional
politics approach. They conceptualize the state itself, and its political actors,
as embedded in multiple institutional contexts. Political elites perceptions
of movements cultures do not stem solely from their position in the state,
but also from their positions as political actors whose legitimacy and identity
develop in a relational context (Somers 1994). Social movements can shape
the webs of meaning that define the rules of legitimacy for political elites,
but movements themselves also develop in webs of meaning associated with
political elites, the state, and other institutions (Friedland and Alford 1991;
Skrentny 1996; 1998; Dudziak 2000). Studies can more closely attend to the
ways in which social movement leaders, as meaning-entrepreneurs, and
political elites, interact as individuals (albeit ones who are embedded in
particular organizations and institutions) in constructing, interpreting, and
responding to the meaning of social movement goals and strategies.
In short, social movements and their cultures develop in a context where
multiple audiences shape legitimacy both the rules of and access to legitimacy (Valocchi 1996). Yet, they also have the power to alter those rules of
legitimacy. They key for social movement scholars is not only delineating
the ways that culture matters to social movements, but also how it comes
to matter to political elites. In a comprehensive study of the minority rights
revolution, Skrentny writes that analyses of policy-making must recognizes
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471

that creative, willful people are at the center of [the] story, though their
identities and power may be constituted by institutions and meanings. Policy
elites make decisions and those decisions matter (2002, p. 14). Future scholarship on social movements should thus turn more attention to the ways
in which culture is inextricably intertwined with structure, as well as to the
ways in which political elites, as individuals with power, shape the development of movement cultures as well as their impact on the political arena.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks the editor, Amy Best, and one anonymous reviewer for
their thoughtful comments on how to improve this essay.
Short Biography
Jenny Irons is a sociologist broadly interested in the dynamics of race in
the realms of politics and culture; specifically, she focuses on the relationship
of race, social movements, and meaning. She has a book forthcoming with
Vanderbilt University Press entitled, Reconstituting Whiteness: The Mississippi
State Sovereignty Commission. Currently, she is returning to a project begun
several years ago and considering a new one: the former will focus on the
interplay of identity, race, and collective memory and the latter will examine
the meaning of citizenship and activism for college students who participate
in humanitarian aid on the United States/Mexico border. She earned her
undergraduate degree in sociology-anthropology at Millsaps College in
Jackson, Mississippi, and went on to complete an MA and PhD in sociology
at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She currently teaches at Hamilton
College in Clinton, New York.
Note
* Correspondence address: Department of Sociology, Hamilton College, 198 College Hill Road,
Clinton, NY 13323, USA. Email: jirons@hamilton.edu

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