Introduction: Movements and Morality

Abstract

The introductory chapter argues why there is a need for a book on movements and morality and how this volume meets this need. It introduces the twofold purpose of the book: insights into the moral foundations of current civic struggles and political conflicts and developing theoretical, empirical, and methodological approaches to studying morality in movements. Then a review of the development of the field of social movement research reveals how morality is treated fragmentarily, which leads to a discussion of the terminological tempest of morality and an introduction of the three moral dimensions that structure the book: selves in interaction, rationalization and justification, and culture and tradition. The contributions to the volume are introduced according to these three dimensions, and a final section points to the methodological creativity and diversity that characterizes the volume, attesting to the fruitfulness of a research agenda centered on movements and morality.

Some Refugees Welcome? Frame Disputes between Micro-Cohorts in the Refugee Solidarity Movement

“…This study contributes by providing unique insight into the rarely studied phenomenon of micro-cohort structured frame disputes driving the transformation of social movement collective identity and ideology (Benford 1993;Melucci 1989;Taylor and Whittier 1992;Whittier 1997), thereby developing our understanding of the eventfulness of such transformations and how such framing disputes are enabled and constraint by the central moral principles of the movement (Abbott 1995;Goffman 1983;Lichterman and Eliasoph 2014;Sevelsted and Toubøl 2023a). These insights are derived from studying one of the most salient movements in Western societies over the last decades, the refugee solidarity movement Della Porta 2018;Feischmidt, Pries, and Cantat 2019).…”