Social Movements. Donatella della Porta
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trait of the programmed society is the “production of symbolic goods which model or transform our representation of human nature and the external world” (Touraine 1987, p. 127; 1985). It is the control of information that constitutes the principal source of social power.
In consequence, conflicts tend to shift from the workplace to areas such as research and development, the elaboration of information, biomedical and technical sciences, and the mass media. In his view, the central actors in social conflict are no longer classes linked to industrial production but groups with opposing visions concerning the use and allocation of cognitive and symbolic resources. In contrast with Marxism, classes are not defined only in relation to the system of production (see, for example, Miliband 1989), and class action is, in fact, the “behavior of an actor guided by cultural orientations and set within social relations defined by an unequal connection with the social control of these orientations” (Touraine 1981, p. 61). As for Pierre Bourdieu, the cultural sphere is considered as the main place for the exercise of social domination. However, Touraine differed from the deterministic approach of his French colleague in that he conceives social movements as struggling to influence the cultural sphere (Girling 2004).
Mobilizations by social movements addressed, therefore, the defense of the autonomy of civil society from the attempts of public and private technocratic groups to extend their control over ever‐widening areas of social life.11 If Touraine’s formulation places the analysis of conflicts and movements in the center of his general theoretical model, other scholars have still paid attention to the structural dimension, but without attempting to identify new dominant cleavages. Originally influenced by Touraine, Alberto Melucci held, however, improbable the emergence of new conflicts with a centrality comparable to that of the capital–labor conflict of the industrial society.12 Melucci never denied the persistent importance of traditional conflicts based on inequalities of power and wealth, and of the political actors, protagonists of these conflicts. However, he identified the peculiarity of contemporary conflicts in processes of individualization which still have their roots in structural dynamics, yet of a different kind – for example, the pervasive influence of caring institutions over the self, the globalization of communications and life experiences, the growth of media systems. And he denied the possibility of reducing responses to these differentiated structural tensions to any sort of unified paradigm of collective action. The latter – itself in a variety of forms – is, rather, just one of innumerable options open to individuals struggling for an autonomous definition of their self.
2.4.2 Which Class Base for Which Social Movements?
The relationship between structural change and new conflicts has also been viewed from another perspective. A number of scholars have stressed the fact that social change has produced a new social stratum – the so‐called new middle class. According to this point of view, this class is able, as a result of the resources it controls and of its position, to play a central role in new conflicts. For some time, analyses of postindustrial society have revealed, in parallel with the growth of the administrative/service sector in society, the emergence of social groups that stand out, because of their level of education, the roles they play, and their specific social location, from the traditional middle classes (Bell 1973; Gouldner 1979; Goldthorpe 1982; Lash and Urry 1987; Scott 1990). The new middle class, according to these analyses, is constituted from sectors of the population that tend to be employed in the service sector: they are highly educated, yet are not comparable with managers or traditional professionals. As a result of their technical and cultural competence and of their economic‐functional position, members of the new middle class have been considered as more likely to mobilize in conflicts of the new type we have just described: that is, to fight against technocrats, public and private agencies engaged in the dissemination of information and in the construction of consensus, the military and the apparatus responsible for social control. This argument has been presented on numerous occasions in recent years, and several investigations have confirmed the persistent presence of the new middle class among sympathizers and activists of the new movements.13
However, it is unclear whether the link between the new middle class, new movements, and new types of conflict effectively demonstrates the existence of a specific structural base for these types of conflict. The presence en masse of the new middle class in protest movements could, in fact, simply reflect the traditional inclination of the intellectual middle class to participate in any type of conflict (Bagguley 1995a) given their greater confidence in their own rights and capacity to speak up and participate in political life (Bourdieu 1984). From this perspective, the reference to specific structural contradictions at the base of new conflicts somewhat loses consistency. It is, rather, the case that belonging to the middle class, on the one hand, facilitates the taking up of concerns that are generically favorable to public involvement; and on the other, puts at one’s disposal individual resources and competences that can be spent in various types of political action.
In effect, comparative analysis of political participation has revealed on numerous occasions that variables of a sociodemographic type tend to explain with equal efficacy both unconventional participation (particularly widespread among movement sympathizers and activists) and conventional participation. There is, for example, a strong correlation between two factors that are usually regarded as indicators of the new middle class – youth and a high level of education – and various types of political attitudes and/or political participation (Barnes et al. 1979; Opp 1989, Chapter 7; Norris 2002, 201 ff.). Intellectuals have traditionally constituted the leadership of ethnic movements (Smith 1981). Furthermore, a comparison of political ecology and more traditional environmentalist currents showed that activists from the new middle class were present in equal measure in both sectors, in spite of the difficulty to identify conservation groups as new social movements (Diani 1995, p. 58).
Rather than on peculiar class dynamics, the undeniable relationship between membership in the new middle class and involvement in some types of protest movements might well be dependent on yet other factors. For example, it might be the outcome of the enormous rise in access to higher education, which again originated in the 1960s. More specifically, higher education might not only provide people with distinctive intellectual skills; it might also foster the growth of an egalitarian and anti‐authoritarian set of values, which are overrepresented among at least some sectors of the new middle class (Rootes 1995). Alternatively, youth radicalism might be related to generational experiences, as the current members of the new middle classes have all been exposed to that particular combination of social conditions, consisting of the end of the Cold War and the spread to the middle classes of unprecedented economic prosperity (Pakulski 1995, p. 76). Or there might be lifecycle effects, as younger people’s political involvement might be dependent on their biographical availability, given their more uncertain status, their still unsettled professional life, and their greater independence from family and community linkages (Piven and Cloward 1992).
Moreover, the notion of middle class risks comprising quite heterogeneous social sectors: those who work in the sector of culture and personal services and those who fulfill managerial or other technocratic functions risk remaining unclear; the sectors of the new middle class that are closer to the problems of the management of organizations (managers) and those who, instead, draw their legitimacy and their status from being controllers of professional resources, independent of specific organizational structures (professionals) (Kriesi 1993, pp. 31–32). To evaluate appropriately the importance of the new middle class in social movements, it is useful, therefore, to differentiate between its internal components. Taking inspiration from Wright (1985), who regarded classes as defined by different combinations of “assets in the means of production, organizational assets and skills or credentials,” Hanspeter Kriesi identified the distinctive characteristic of the new middle class in the fact that it exercises some control over organizational resources and/or over professional skills, but does not possess the means of production (Kriesi 1993, p. 28; see also Kriesi 1989a). In particular, he suggested looking at three different sectors of the new middle class: alongside the “sociocultural specialists” are managers and those who fulfill clearly technical roles. This last group includes administrative