Dangerous Issues and Public Identities: The Negotiation of Controversy in Two Movement Organizations

Social movement organizations frame not only their target issues, but their own organizational identities. In doing so, they are sometimes forced to make difficult decisions that pit principle against considerations of image. This article compares and contrasts episodes from two different movements:...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociological inquiry 2006-05, Vol.76 (2), p.231-263
Main Author: Haines, Herbert H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capital Punishment
Civil Rights
Decriminalization
Drug legalization
Drugs
Human Rights
Impression Management
Organizational Culture
Political sociology
Social Movement Organizations
Social movements
Social movements. Revolutions
Sociology
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Summary:Social movement organizations frame not only their target issues, but their own organizational identities. In doing so, they are sometimes forced to make difficult decisions that pit principle against considerations of image. This article compares and contrasts episodes from two different movements: (1) Amnesty International's (AIUSA) expansion of its human rights agenda to include death penalty abolitionism and (2) the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) endorsement of drug legalization. Based upon documentary and interview data, I demonstrate that Amnesty's decision to work toward the abolition of capital punishment provoked intense internal debate based upon the prevalence within AIUSA at that time of a narrow conception of human rights, concern about the effect of anti‐death penalty projects on the group's priorities, and the fear that the carefully crafted image the organization had built would be damaged by anti‐death penalty work. The ACLU's endorsement of drug legalization provoked some of the same concerns, but issues of public identity management were far less evident. Instead, internal debates focused on the proper breadth of the organization's anti‐prohibitionism. I suggest that the differences between the two cases may be understood in terms of contrasting organizational cultures, framing vocabularies, and membership profiles.
ISSN:0038-0245
1475-682X
DOI:10.1111/j.1475-682X.2006.00153.x