What motivates citizens to mobilise, and why? This Institute of Development Studies (IDS) paper reflects on case studies of citizen mobilisation in the North and South, arguing that the politics of knowledge is central to how movements are mobilised, framed and identified. Mobilised citizens are knowledgeable actors engaged in dynamic, networked politics, involved in shifting forms of social solidarity and identification at local, national and global levels. Understanding mobilisation processes and the implications for citizenship requires analysis from a combination of perspectives.
Mobilisation processes are shaped by political histories and cultures, at both the individual and institutional level. Three key themes emerge from the case studies: 1) knowledge and power 2) cultures, styles and practices of activism and 3) the multiplicity of spaces in which citizens mobilise and press their claims.
Four distinctive perspectives in the analysis of social movements are examined:
- Theories of resource mobilisation and political process: regard citizens as rational actors who mobilise when the state fails to protect their rights. A longer-term perspective on changing political conditions and opportunities is essential to understanding when mobilisations occur.
- Theories of framing: emphasise how mobilisations seek to establish and promote certain meanings and problem-definitions as legitimate against those who would dispute them.
- Theories of movement identity: examine how common identities are formed. Mobilisations gain strength from the interaction of processes of identification operating at multiple levels, both through immediate contexts of shared experience and more historically sedimented forms of solidarity and group identity.
- Theories of space, place and network: often involving multi-layered networking and alliances. Localised movements emerging in specific contexts may be linked into global networks, although this can raise tensions and ambiguities.
Citizenship can be defined in more actor-oriented and performative terms as ‘practised engagement through emergent social solidarities’. There is a need to extend the scope of literature on social movements and citizenship. Emergent issues are:
- Contests over knowledge are central to the dynamics of mobilisation.
- Knowledge alliances, linked to changing social and political interests, transform how issues are publicly understood and debated.
- A wide range of styles and practices of activism exist, both between and within movements. There are often different degrees of engagement within a movement.
- Understanding mobilisation requires attention to the contingent interaction of spaces and places, people and networks, events and moments.
- Activists use legal spaces, strategically exploiting different routes of legal redress. Legal action requires high levels of resource mobilisation.
- Access to broader public debate through the media is essential. The mass-media and information technology are important spaces for contestation and sharing, enabling new forms of activity at local and global levels.
