Contention

This issue is—in many ways—united by a common theme: revisiting the past and rethinking the problems it poses. Beginning with a renewed test of the biographical availability hypothesis, moving through a reassessment of the dynamics of collective identity formation, and stopping at a re-evaluation of the legacies of the 2011 protest wave, this issue begs that we reconsider that which we thought we already knew and open our minds to novel nuance and differential dynamics. It is thus fitting that it closes with a reflection on the life's work of William Gamson, whose work prompted a great many scholars of social movements and contentious politics to reassess and re-evaluate much that we had assumed to know over the years.

Much has been made of the Millennial generation's seemingly low rates of political participation. Some argue that this generation is politically apathetic, while others suggest that Millennials have eschewed traditional politics in favor of protest as a means of political participation. Drawing on Canada's 2013 General Social Survey (Cycle 27, Social Identity), I employ an exploratory latent class analysis to determine whether the Millennial generation can be usefully categorized according to their participation in various forms of political, civic, and social movement activities. I then use binary logit regression to determine how well the biographical availability hypothesis explains Millennial politics. This research reveals that Canadian Millennials may be grouped into four categories: the politically unengaged, the politically expressive, the civically engaged, and activist. Support for the biographical availability hypothesis is mixed. As expected, students are more likely to be activists and parenthood reduces the odds of being politically expressive or an activist, but home ownership does not decrease the chances of Millennials being politically engaged and increases the chances of being civically engaged. Younger Millennials (ages 15–24) are much more likely to be politically unengaged compared to older Millennials (ages 25–34).

Collective identities, as literature suggests, are constructed via an emphasis on sameness within a group and in the downplaying of internal difference. This study, however, found that collective agency, and resultingly, collective identity, was fueled just as much by a careful negotiation of difference as it was a group's core similarities. Based on interviews with Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists involved in two Palestinian-led coalitions in Israel/Palestine, the study shows how uneven privileges and other differences, could be leveraged for the benefit of the coalitions, particularly through assessing what each ethno-national group brought to the collective. When members enacted their closely negotiated and distinct roles, the coalition's sense of “we” was further solidified. Indeed, as this article illustrates, difference as well as unequal privileges, can be perceived as a defining feature of a strategically constructed collective identity and the reason for a partnership, not simply a problem to be managed.

Ten years ago, a seemingly titanic wave of contention swept the globe. This article reflects on how the impact of a wave of contentious political action that is now a full decade old manifests today. These “legacies of contention”—the historically contingent impact of contentious episodes—can variably re-enforce, undermine, or depart substantially from the original focus of a given contentious episode, a sign of how difficult it can be to extrapolate from the causal impact of contentious politics in the near-run. Herein we discuss the fates of some of the 2011 contentious episodes, including Syria, Greece, Israel, England, and the United States.

William A. Gamson's career was nothing less than remarkable. A prolific scholar, Gamson wrote at least eight books and more than a hundred articles from 1961 to 2014. And he bequeathed social movement studies substantial theoretical contributions and methodological innovations in numerous areas including coalitions, resource mobilization, political opportunities, framing, and culture. His legacy also includes pioneering simulation games both for teaching and for use by social movements, novel pedagogies (in part inspired by his wife, sociologist, Zelda Gamson), and a well-articulated scholar-activist model that has—and will continue—to inspire. This article discusses his extraordinary career and his legacy for social movements, academia, and beyond.

McKee Hurwitz, Heather. 2020. Are We the 99%? The Occupy Movement, Feminism and Intersectionality. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. 208 pp, index. EAN: 978-1-4399-2021-3 (hardback), $99.50; EAN: 978-1-4399-2022-0 (paperback), $25.95.