ABSTRACT
Collective actors constantly engage in articulating their collective interests, evaluating organizational leadership, and perceiving collective action opportunities with an interpretive framework-and as a consequence of such a “signifying” (or “framing” à la constructionists) work, agents come to share collective identity. Thus, an interpretive framework is a cognitive tool for framing, and collective identity is its result and at the same time is a precondition for collective action. In other words, social movements and collective actions are germane to the formation of collective identity and of interpretive framework, and movement trajectories and action repertories are contingent on their shifts. Interpretive framework and collective identity do not drive from social structures alone or exist a priori but are a sociohistorical construct. They are also not static but perpetually variant. Furthermore, interpretive framework and collective identity are formed and transformed by the conjunctural articulation of multi-level social relationsmacro-structural (re)configurations, meso-organizational efficacy or efficiency and their alterations, and micro-individual (re)evaluations.
