Silencing to Give Voice: Backstage Preparations in the Undocumented Youth Movement in Los Angeles

Building upon intensive ethnographic research on the undocumented youth movement in Los Angeles, this paper investigates the backstage work done by the leaders and activists within a movement to create cohesive and disciplined frontstage performances. These backstage techniques and strategies are im...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Qualitative sociology 2016-09, Vol.39 (3), p.287-308
Main Authors: Fiorito, Tara R., Nicholls, Walter J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activism
Children & youth
Cross Cultural Psychology
Ethnography
Heterogeneity
Jasper, James M
Personality and Social Psychology
Social change
Social Sciences
Sociology
Steinberg, Marc
Training
Youth
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Building upon intensive ethnographic research on the undocumented youth movement in Los Angeles, this paper investigates the backstage work done by the leaders and activists within a movement to create cohesive and disciplined frontstage performances. These backstage techniques and strategies are important to examine because frontstage unity is not natural or automatic. As most campaigns are made up of heterogeneous individuals, organizations and groups, frontstage coherence is something that needs to be worked upon. We show that this essential backstage work consists of 1) training activists to become disciplined frontstage performers; 2) converging the feelings of activists through emotionally intensive disciplinary techniques; and 3) managing differences and conflicts in the free spaces of the movement. This paper thus aims to encourage scholars to look under the hood of public protests and give greater weight to studying the backstage work needed to produce strong and powerful voices.
ISSN:0162-0436
1573-7837
DOI:10.1007/s11133-016-9333-8