Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age

Alberto Melucci

Cambridge University Press, Sep 12, 1996 - Social Science - 441 pages

In Challenging Codes Melucci brings an original perspective to research on collective action which both emphasizes the role of culture and makes telling connections with the experience of the individual in postmodern society. The focus is on the role of information in an age which knows both fragmentation and globalisation, building on the analysis of collective action familiar from the author's Nomads of the Present. Melucci addresses a wide range of contemporary issues, including political conflict and change, feminism, ecology, identity politics, power and inequality.

Contents

• The construction of collective action: 13
• Collective action as a construct: 16
• Principles for analysis of collective action: 22
• Conflict and change: 42
• How an antagonistic conflict is born: 44
• Addressing the social dimension of change: 48
• Integration and change: 51
• Action and meaning: 54
• Interests and action: 61
• Recognizing what is common: 64
• The process of collective identity: 68
• what one can see through it: 77
• Identity and collective emotional experience: 80
• Collective identity in historical context: 83
• Contemporary collective action: 87
• Conflicts of culture: 89
• Contemporary social movements: 97
• Antagonist action?: 106
• Networks in the everyday: 113
• Invention of the present: 118
• Time and the culture of the possible: 123
• Youth as a mirror: 127
• Where have all the flowers gone?: 129
• The time of difference: 133
• Between condition and action: 136
• To make a difference: 140
• Roots for today and for tomorrow: 145
• Ethnicity nation territory: 154
• Identity as problem: 157
• A search for ethics: 163
• Altruistic action: 166
• The spiritual quest: 171
• Information power domination: 176
• Forms of resistance withdrawal and symbolic challenge: 182
• Identity polities?: 186
• The world system and the end of historicism: 190
• Movements and the political system: 197
• The field of collective action: 205
• A society without a centre: 207
• Autonomy and the limits of political action: 211
• The dilemmas of complexity: 217
• Public spaces representation and the role of knowledge: 218
• Public discourse and the power of naming: 225
• The political system: 229
• Political demands: 234
• The production of decisions: 236
• The effects of the political system: 240
• The state and the distribution of social resources: 243
• The unity of the state: 245
• Social organization or difficult integration: 249
• Classes or stratification?: 255
• Modernization crisis and conflicts the case of Italy: 259
• The intersection between crisis and emerging conflicts: 264
• The transformation of collective action: 272
• Winds from the Right: 275
• Civic culture and democracy: 281
• Acting collectively: 285
• Mobilization and political participation: 287
• The formation of a movement: 289
• Mobilizing factors: 292
• Participation: 295
• Repression and social control: 301
• On the concept of political participation: 303
• Mobilization in contemporary movements: 307
• The organization of movements: 313
• Internal processes of the organization: 317
• Relations between the organization and the environment: 323
• The forms of organization: 326
• Selfreflective organizations: 328
• Leadership in social movements: 332
• Charismatic leadership: 335
• The role of leadership: 339
• Conformity and innovation: 341
• Network leaders: 344
• Collective action and discourse: 348
• Integration and strategy: 352
• The ambivalence of collective frames: 355
• Reversing the symbolic order: 357
• Forms of action: 361
• Violence in collective action: 367
• Crowd behaviour: 371
• Direct action and conflictual participation: 378
• Research on collective action: 380
• How a we is formed: 382
• Research procedures: 384
• Ways out: 391
• Moral and political implications: 393
• References: 398

Popular passages

Page 8 - In the past twenty years emerging social conflicts in advanced societies have not expressed themselves through political action, but rather have raised cultural challenges to the dominant language, to the codes that organize information and shape social practices.

Page 1 - They force the power out into the open and give it a shape and a face. They speak a language that seems to be entirely their own, but they say something that transcends their particularity and speaks to us all.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age; Cambridge Cultural Social Studies
• Author: Alberto Melucci
• Editors: Jeffrey C. Alexander, Steven Seidman
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1996
• ISBN: 0521578434, 9780521578431
• Length: 441 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social; Social Science / Sociology / General