Social Movements and Networks Relational Approaches to Collective Action

For the first time in a single volume, leading social movement researchers map the full range of applications of network concepts and tools to their field of inquiry. They illustrate how networks affect individual contributions to collective action in both democratic and non-democratic organizations; how patterns of inter-organizational linkages affect the circulation of resources both within movement milieus and between movement organizations and the political system; how network concepts and techniques may improve our grasp of the relationship between movements and elites, of the configuration of alliance and conflict structures, of the clustering of episodes of contention in protest cycles.Social Movements and Networks casts new light on our understanding of social movements and cognate social and political processes.

Mario Diani is Professor of Sociology at the University of Trento, Italy, and the European Editor of Mobilization. Doug McAdam is Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, and Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.