We coconstruct a series of autoethnographic reflections to offer analysis of the emotions involved in early social movement mobilization. Oil and gas extraction and production are deeply embedded in Oklahoma’s economic, political, social, and cultural milieu. Using Woods et al.’s ladder of emotions model, we consider the constraints faced by three different proenvironmental/antifracking activists in Oklahoma within the context of place-based activism. Emotion and place-based identities are central to the early stages and continuance of social movement organization. We call for greater attention to these dynamics and further study of the role of emotions in the emergence, ascendance, and abeyance of social movement activity.
A growing body of research demonstrates that U.S. politics has become increasingly polarized over the past few decades. In these polarized times, what potential roles might social movements play in bridging divides between, or perhaps further dividing, people across a variety of political and social groups? In this article, we propose a research agenda for social movement studies focused on the prosocial and antisocial outcomes of social movements. Although scholars commonly frame their work on the consequences of social movements in terms of social movements' political, economic, cultural, and biographical outcomes, we suggest a focus on two categories of social movement outcomes (prosocial and antisocial outcomes) that cut across prior theoretical categories, and we show how an emerging body of scholarship has documented such outcomes at micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis. We also consider how emerging scholarship has addressed the sociological question about the conditions under which social movements produce prosocial versus antisocial outcomes. As we argue, attention to prosocial and antisocial outcomes of social movements holds both theoretical implications for social movement research and practical implications for social movements navigating the United States' political and social divides.
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