As expressed in the preceding chapter, this study takes the strategic relational approach (SRA) suggested by two critical realist theorists, Colin Hay and Bob Jessop, as its basic conceptual framework (see Chapter 2). The insights of the social movement theories discussed in chapter 3 are implemented in this framework in a cohesive manner.
This chapter explains how the integrative framework is formulated and operationalized in this study. The first section states the concrete description of the operationalized conceptual framework for its specific re- search focus. The following section supplements the clarification of discourses and frames and the procedure for analysing them. The final section explains how this study intends to explore outcomes of the organisa- tion’s strategic choice for the organic movement.
Application of theoretical insights in the conceptual framework
Outline
As already stressed several times, this study envisages an integrated conceptual framework that can capture interplay between such collective agency as organisation for the organic movement and its external struc- tures. This framework is based on the strategic relational approach (SRA) of Colin Hay and Bob Jessop, though their simple framework has to be elaborated and adjusted to the objective of this study. The most basic part of these elaborations was already introduced in Chapter 2. In this section, firstly, the application of the major insights of the selected social movement theories is introduced. Secondly, it explains an additional elaboration necessary for examining the internal dimension of organisation.
To operationalize this study’s core external environments for the actor, i.e. nature, structure, and culture, it needs to reconfigure the simple implication of structure and culture by SRA. As mentioned in Chapter 2, Jessop and Hay construe structure (or in their terminology, “the strategically selective context”) as the mate- rial sphere, and culture (“the discursively selective context”) as the non-material. Following this, nature and social structure are bluntly configured as the former, and culture as the latter. More in detail, I recognise these three domains of external environment as mutually distinct for their characteristic properties: Nature contains self-sustaining ecological systems, social structure comprises institutions, and culture entails sym- bols and codes. Furthermore, they are seen as analytically distinctive structures that impose a selective envi- ronment of constraint and opportunity to different social actors. In other words, nature entails environmental opportunity structures; structure, political opportunity structures (POS); and culture, discursive opportunity structures (DOS). These opportunity structures are further unpacked to mechanisms.33 In the broadest sense, environmental opportunity structures consist of various kinds of natural environmental mechanisms, which are phenomena of non-human and natural environment that directly affect human life. Examples are natural disasters, geo-climatic conditions in a location, resource depletion, etc. As such, they comprise the founda- tion for what kind of agriculture is naturally functional for the location. In contrast, POS is constituted of
institutional-relational mechanisms driving relationships in the institutional sphere. Such relationships can be signified, for instance, as coalitions and/or cleavages among specific individuals, groups, and networks. And DOS is driven by symbolic-cognitive mechanisms that organise relationships between a set of symbols and codes, which in turn affect cognitive rule systems (templates/schemes) of individuals as well as collec- tivities. What Eder calls “public discourse marketplace” and Snow et al.’s master frame belong here. Based on this conception, this study targets more concretely the following areas as the external contexts of the or-
33 “Mechanism” in this study follows the DoC programme claiming it as “a delimited class of events that alter relations among specified sets of elements in identical or closely similar ways over a variety of situations” (McAdam et al., 2001, p.24).
ganic organisations; natural environmental conditions/circumstances; state and civil society; and discourse of organic agriculture. See the following sections for more details.
These external structures are, then, put into the core unit of this study, organic organisations. Here, organisa- tions are seen as strategic, reflexive, and also emotionally/morally-motivated collective agencies. In this way, they are not just subordinated to the external environments they are situated in. These natural, structural, and cultural environments privilege some actor but discriminate others, though, as history has showed, they are by no means stagnant and unchangeable by the agentic power of people.
Following the strategic-relational perspective of SRA, these external environments and actors must be put into each other’s context. Yet the agent’s internal context that brings particular strategy is still underdevel- oped by SRA and social movement theories in general. I inject the concept of organisational orientation as the characteristic mechanism of the domain of actor. This mechanism is unpacked into four elements. Firstly,
organisational disposition represents well-integrated cognitive schema and preferences of the organisation that reproduce a relatively stable equilibrium in organisational practice. My inspiration for this concept comes from Nick Crossley, who similarly envisages an integrated framework for social movement studies (Crossley, 2002a:2002b:2005), and from Nicos P. Mouzelis (Mouzelis, 2008), who deals with such a frame- work more broadly for social theory at large. Both develop Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, especially his concept of habitus. Three additional elements of the internal context suggested by this study are organi- sational structure, relations among members, and resources.
The overall conceptualisation of this relationship between actor and external environment is illustrated in the figure below.
Figure 9 Conceptual framework of this study
Structures
Stateabove, the state is still the most significant institution in terms of setting limits for and giving opportunities to social movements (Wapner, 1996:Tarrow and Imig, 2001:Dryzek, Downes et al., 2003:Eckersley, 2004). Particularly in terms of the organic movement in the two countries pursued by this study, this is the case. Thus the inquiry underscores the context of formal political/policy institutions in the targeted countries. I think the concept of the political opportunity structure (POS),34 which brings attention to such aspects as openness or closeness of the state, routinized political coalition pattern among elites, political cleavage, and change in those (Kriesi et al., 1997), is still a useful analytical tool for tracing the political context of the state. Yet its traditional formulation based on the static, homogeneous, and one-directional view of the state must be revised for a more dynamic and relational perspective envisaged by this study. At this point, the proposal of the DoC programme for revising POS by injecting the view of actors’ cognitive attribution to threat and opportunity is a valuable first step. Yet this study would prefer preserving the perception of POS as an objec- tive category as much as implementing such proposal. Although the former perspective was abandoned in the DoC programme (McAdam et al., 2001, p.46-47), opportunity and constraint allocated by the social structure can affect actors regardless of their interpretations. This is not to deny that such influence itself is a product of a complex process of interpretation. The crucial point is that social structures entail autonomous mechanisms outside people’s perception. Taking this point, this study locates the more phenomenological view of “perceived (attributed)” POS in the realms of culture and (collective) actor. It enters the cultural realm when the recognition of specific political opportunity or threat reaches the social level, while it is found in the actors’ realm, when it is a subjective perception of an individual or a shared perception of the specific collective actor. (See more in the next section about culture). The analytical distinction between objective POS and interpreted POS is significant for this study since it targets an explanation of organisa- tions’ strategic choices, not only from what an organisation has thought but also from the external systemic context that gave sense to the organisation’s decision. This relates to another research question of this study concerning the outcome of the strategic choice.
Civil society
I construe civil society as an emerging institutional sphere where social movements are given birth and nour- ished. Based on this conception POS within this institutional field should also be explored. Those who intend to capture civil society as a non-political sphere may disagree with this sphere being treated with POS, which is most often used to signify the context of formal political institutions. At this point, the conception of “poli- tics” must overcome the traditional division in the social movement studies between politics and culture. This can be done by transcending the narrow definition of politics within the boundary of formal institutional politics, while extending the notion towards involvement in the issues of “distribution, exercise and conse- quence of power” (Hay, 2002, p.3). In this extended view, political struggles do not reside only in the formal political system, but also in everyday life of households, schools, churches, mosques, temples, working plac- es, etc. This vision resonates with Colin Hay’s words:
34
Rucht and Neidhardt propose an attractive concept called “societal opportunity structure” as an innovation of POS. They find that POS should be further developed, since “[a] truly sociological approach” necessitates the questions such as “which relevant reference groups determine the field of action of social movements? Which internal conditions of the reference groups and which connections between them promote or impede the possibility that social movements will succeed or become stabilized?” (2002, p.13). I agree that the traditional sense of POS must be developed. However, I prefer this development to be done by a reformulation of the basic understanding of “political” toward the direction that “encompass(es) the entire sphere of the social” and as the process of power relations rather than the space in which such power relations take place, as suggested by Hay (2002, p.5. See more in the final section of this chapter). Thus envisag- ing this reformulation of the “truly sociological approach”, this study does not use the new term suggested by Rucht and Neidhardt. However, their terminology is also attractive for those who detect the significance of ”non-political” aspects of social movements. This study, however, focuses on the political aspects of its target, namely, the organic movement, even though it has often been self-claimed as a non-political movement, with this new formulation of the political.
The political should be defined in such a way as to encompass the entire sphere of the social. The implication of this is that events processes and practices should not be labelled “non-political” or “extra-political” simply by virtue of the specific setting or context in which they occur. All events, processes and practices which occur within the social sphere have the potential to be political and, hence, to be amenable to political analysis. The realm of government is no more innately political, by this definition, that that of culture, law or the domestic sphere….A political analysis is, then, one which draws attention to the power relations implicated in social relations. In this sense, poli- tics is not defined by the locus of its operation but by its nature as a process (Hay, 2002, p.3 Italic original).
I also consider this vision much closer to reality. As mentioned above, movement actors do not necessarily aim to gain access to the state. Furthermore, their strategy of institutionalisation is not merely a result of the actors’ preference or the POS predefined by the state; it also depends on the conditions of the civil society in question. For example, as signified as “radical flank effect” in the social movement studies, possibilities for relatively moderate movement group for allying with the formal actors can increase when there is a radical movement group, since the state actors intend to hinder further radicalisation of the movement (McAdam, McCarthy et al., 1996b:Tarrow, 1997:Gupta, 2002). As often recognised by organisation theorists, the suc- cess of certain organisational forms, say, professionalised and centralised NGOs, can generate a pattern of similar organisational forms in the field (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). As such, the tendency of the domi- nant civil society organisations can suppress other actors in the same field. Again, the analytical division between the objective condition and the interpreted one becomes useful for exploring the area where the existing suppressions are even not detected by the social movement. For instance, Kriesi and his colleagues (Kriesi, Koopmans et al., 1995) show that the overrepresentation of labour unions in the movement field in France has hindered the nationwide growth of the environmental movement.
The intention of this study is not an extensive investigation of the civil society at large, but barely to extract some significant elements and developments of the organic movement community as a sub-component of civil society. My more precise target with regard to POS in civil society is the relationship between the lead- ing organic organisations and other civil society actors, such as traditional farmers’ unions, consumer groups/organisations, anti-pollution movement groups/organisations, labour unions, etc. By collecting the pieces of these aspects of the organic movement community, I hope to draw an outline of civil society in the two countries.
Culture
Perhaps the concept of culture is more contested than that of structure in social theorisation. As discussed in chapter 2, one of the biggest and most crucial disagreements is whether to understand culture as an internal and integrated part of actors or an external and autonomous entity. In the Foucauldian school of thought, culture, which is presented in the form of discourse, is the most dominant force of life, penetrating our mind- set and thus our daily practices. Culture is already an integral part of individuals’ mind and body. In Parsoni- an functionalism, culture, as one of the three systems (the other two are the social and the personality sys- tem), is perceived as “an ordered symbolic system” (Parsons, 1977, p.168) made of a symbolically-mediated pattern or standards of values. While this three-level system considers these components (i.e. values) on the level of cultural system in a rather “disembodied” way (Mouzelis, 2008, p.723), they are, via institutionalisa- tion, to become norms that form social role expectations and daily routines on the level of the social system. As these norms go through socialisation and internalisation, they become dispositions and needs in the per- sonality system. In his later work, Parson became more explicit about the supremacy of culture for determin- ing the outcome of action. As such, culture is not only clearly distinguished from other social structures and systems, but also seen as the most dominant external environment for actors.
codes to consequently motivate individuals to take certain patterns of action (Alexander, 1998). Such con- ception of culture as internal to the actor is also affirmed by Habermas in his drawing of the lifeworld as clearly distinct from the “system” (i.e. political and economic systems – state and market). In his clear-cut division between system and lifeworld, the former is understood as the autonomous space where bureaucrats and monetisation can almost automatically and systematically reproduce itself, while maintenance of the latter needs communicative understanding among people. In this line of thought, which views the lifeworld exclusively as a communicative arena, culture and the lifeworld tend to be conflated and understood as an internal environment of the actors and for their communicative action. On the other hand, the system is re- garded as the external environment wherein lively communicative media does not matter much but money and power do.
In contrast to these views of culture either as most determinant or internal to a personality/everyday life sys- tem, I recognise culture as an autonomous environment which externally influences actors. Here, I find it is more beneficial to distinguish cultural structure as a symbolic whole from the sphere of actor as suggested by Mouzelis, Archer, Jessop and Hay. Put simply, in real life there are situations where cultural-symbolic codes of the community are not yet internalised or even not known by the actors, for instance, newcomers or immi- grants (Mouzelis, 2008). And needless to say, in contradiction to Parsonian functionalism, there is no guaran- tee that such codes are internalised via institutionalisation and socialisation. An immigrant may sustain her/his core values and beliefs which are fundamentally different from the general values of the host country, even after years of residence and generations. Taking this suggested divisional view, then, symbolic codes – culture – are first internalised into the actor when it becomes her/his dispositions, that is to say, “habitus” a
la Bourdieu (Mouzelis, 2008). As such, this internalised culture (dispositions) is separated from cultural structure. (In this study, this dispositional aspect is integrated into the sphere of actor. See the next section). Thus from this viewpoint, the fact that people belonging to different cultures can potentially reach a “consen- sus” or common understanding/agreement via communication, as suggested by Habermas, does not neces- sarily mean that certain cultural ideas manifested in the consensus become an integral part of the participants’ mindset. They can certainly maintain own ideas and preferences which may conflict with the consensus, while agreeing and materially supporting the latter (Dryzek, 2000). A good example is the typical practice of policy-making, where decisions are nonetheless made even though it is unlikely that all policy-makers come to share the same reason (preference, standpoint and interest) after discussion. Considering these aspects, I find this analytical distinction between culture as objective entity and that as integrated in the personality system helpful, as it elucidates why the “cultural struggle”, as underlined by the NSM perspectives, emerges in the specific society. In other words, it makes us aware of compatibilities and incompatibilities of certain cultural codes to the actor. This aspect cannot be pursued when culture is conflated with the actor’s mind and bodily stand.
Furthermore, as already obvious, this study distinguishes cultural structure from other structures, in this study, social structures (state and civil society) and nature. Unlike Habermas, who largely conflates the life- world, culture, and communicative action (actors), I follow Mouzelis and the above critical realists who un- derstand culture as an analytically distinct sphere which operates on the discursive and virtual level without
entailing actual human or material relations or role relations within itself, but on the basis of relations among symbols/symbolic codes, such as values, beliefs, ideologies, scientific ideas, etc. In this conception, culture and the other structures are fundamentally different, since the former functions without containing internal environment for action, while the latter containing both virtual role relationship and actual actor relationships within itself (Mouzelis, 2008). Symbolic codes are materialised and become actual when they are formed into artworks, religious monuments, rituals, machines, books, etc. Nonetheless, such materialisation takes place only through the act of some actor who interprets and internalises such codes and is motivated to actu- alise them. In this view the actions which are often labelled as culturally-oriented, for instance, those observ- able in the Muhammad cartoon controversy, are not driven by the specific mutually incompatible cultural structures themselves. Rather, they are driven by strategic actors who internalise specific cultural codes (e.g.
“freedom of speech” and media’s autonomy in Denmark and Christianity/the West vs. Islam/terrorists di-