Contentious Minds. How Talks and Ties Sustain Activism

Why does the mind matter for joint action? “Contentious Minds" is a comparative study that offers an explanation for how cognitive and relational processes allow activists to sustain their commitment. Drawing upon survey data and narratives of activists engaged in three commitment communities, we compare the minds of activists involved in contentious politics with those who devote their time to institutional and volunteering action. Postulating that participants engaged in a particular commitment site possess a specific mind makes such a comparison necessary and offers an opportunity to think outside the narrow social movement box. The main argument of the book is that activists of one commitment community rely on a synchronized mind about the aim and means of activism to perform joint action. This synchronization process takes place during action and leads them to perceive common good (aim) and politics (means) through similar cognitive lenses. To assess synchronization within, and the variation between, communities constitutes the first milestone of this book. We further aim to explain how this process unfolds by pointing to the relational mechanisms that enable their minds to be synchronized and by describing the cognitive mechanisms that ensue and allow them to participate in and sustain activism. The perception of common good and politics activists hold is crucial to the empirical consideration of understandings of political citizenship. A further aim of this book is thus to assess if activists construct community-specific democratic cultures. We show that different such cultures are imagined and enacted in our societies, thereby entering the public sphere through collective action. “Contentious Mind" is motivated by a theoretical agenda and makes three major contributions. First, it emphasizes the necessity to bring the mind back in, and its inherent complexity. Second, it calls for an integrated relational perspective that rests upon the structural, instrumental, and interpretative dimensions of social networks. Finally, it advocates a better integration of culture in the study of social movements that effectively values the role of culture in shaping a person’s mind, and argues that such integration provides finer theories of mobilization. We hope this inquiry leads to a renewed interest in the relevance of the mind in the study of social movements.