ABSTRACT
The dilemmas underlying all forms of social movement mobilization can be difficult to see from the standpoint of movement success. When things go well, it seems obvious that the choices and trade-offs made along the way were the right ones for the right times; any previously experienced tensions, ambivalences and uncertainties are easy to sweep under the carpet of memory. When things do not go as planned – despite the skilled, committed and strenuous efforts of organizers – such dilemmas can become more evident to the retrospective eye (although postmortem evaluation sessions can be painful and difficult). But when we observe a fraught episode of movement breakdown unfolding forward – watching the hopes, strategies, mobilization efforts, disappointments, and repair attempts of contending camps develop interactively over time – those dilemmas can leap into clear relief. In such episodes, the tensions generated by the internal complexity of movement arenas become particularly salient and visible, and the interaction of durable relations, individual choices, and situational contingency is particularly potent and fierce.
