TY - JOUR
T1 - Cultural Models of Contention
T2 - How Do the Public Interpret the Repertoire of Contention?
AU - Gøtzsche-Astrup, Johan
AU - Gøtzsche-Astrup, Oluf
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - The literature on contention tends to conflate contentious actions and audience’s interpretation of those actions. This is problematic because interpretation is central to how contention unfolds and brings about social change. We theorise that interpretation is patterned by one or more cultural models of contention. These provide background assumptions about what actions count as political and what actions are legitimate. We show the fruitfulness of our approach in two survey studies of 1429 US citizens. It allows us to explore patterns in how the US public interpret contention. Furthermore, we investigate how interpretation varies across political and apolitical contexts, finding little variation between these. Finally, we study heterogeneity in how the public interpret contention, finding variation between individuals but also shared patterns. The article contributes to the literature on contention by providing a theoretical framework to study the public’s interpretation of contention and a fine-grained empirical analysis of this interpretation.
AB - The literature on contention tends to conflate contentious actions and audience’s interpretation of those actions. This is problematic because interpretation is central to how contention unfolds and brings about social change. We theorise that interpretation is patterned by one or more cultural models of contention. These provide background assumptions about what actions count as political and what actions are legitimate. We show the fruitfulness of our approach in two survey studies of 1429 US citizens. It allows us to explore patterns in how the US public interpret contention. Furthermore, we investigate how interpretation varies across political and apolitical contexts, finding little variation between these. Finally, we study heterogeneity in how the public interpret contention, finding variation between individuals but also shared patterns. The article contributes to the literature on contention by providing a theoretical framework to study the public’s interpretation of contention and a fine-grained empirical analysis of this interpretation.
KW - contentious politics
KW - culture
KW - protests
KW - public
KW - repertoire of contention
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85135015422&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/00380385221109698
DO - 10.1177/00380385221109698
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0038-0385
VL - 57
SP - 586
EP - 605
JO - Sociology
JF - Sociology
IS - 3
ER -