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

• 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
• ISSN: 0038-0245; 1475-682X
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-682X.2006.00153.x

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.