This document discusses various approaches to social movements, including integrationist, anti-systemic, and non-hegemonic approaches. It also examines how social movement organizations become more moderate and bureaucratic over time in order to mobilize more resources and expand membership. Specifically, it analyzes how animal advocacy groups like PETA have shifted from supporting more radical direct action to focusing on more mainstream reform efforts. The document also discusses the tensions between pursuing a single issue focus versus an intersectional approach to social movements.
3. The Carbon Tax
Holly Creenaune, FoS:
• “…Expanding to a carbon market
riddled with international offsets,
polluters will avoid reducing
emissions at the expense of
communities displaced and
affected by damaging offset
projects.”
7. New Social Movements
• Less concerned with achieving political
power.
• More focussed on questioning lifestyles and
values eg individual behaviours.
• Challenge to William Kornhauser’s (1959)
relative deprivation theory: only the most
marginalised and socially isolated members
of society became involved in collective
behaviour.
• 1960s social movements featured many
relatively affluent participants, same with
AAM.
Pendergrast 2015, p. 55
8. Live Export
• Integrationist – chilled meat in place of live animals.
• 69% of Australians support the campaign.
• Animal welfare, humane slaughter (93% of Australians support).
• Anti-systemic – direct action.
• 2003: Ralph Hahnheuser placed processed pig flesh into the feed
of sheep bound for the Middle East = not Halal.
• Crossover between integrationist and anti-systemic activism.
• ALF - activists pose more of a threat to the financial and physical
well-being of its targets than other approaches.
Petray and Pendergrast
9. Non-Hegemonic – Vegan Advocacy
• Reject all slaughter, create alternatives.
• Withdrawing rather than challenging =
less of a threat than direct action, even
welfare reforms.
• Vegans challenge these industries by
rendering them redundant on an
individual level, and imaging a society
where they are no longer needed or
desired.
Petray and Pendergrast
12. Ingrid Newkirk: ‘A Pragmatic Fight for
Animal Rights’
• PETA ‘working with corporations to
achieve animal welfare reforms in their
industries’ and its ‘campaigns for
improved slaughter practises for
chickens, better living conditions for hens
and larger cages for animals in
laboratories’.
• Argues for ‘incremental change’ and
‘incremental improvements’, supporting
her arguments using the theories of ‘the
practical philosopher Peter Singer’.
13. PETA and the ALF
PETA’s Animal Times, early 1990s
• Encouraged people to participate in illegal direct
action through civil disobedience actions like
blockades, sit-ins and even hunt sabotage.
• Acted as the ALF aboveground liaison and press
office by sending out press releases on behalf of
the ALF and other radical activists when they
received anonymous communiqués.
• 1990: full page advertisement encouraging support
for the ALF.
Animal Times more recently
• By 1995, PETA no longer published ALF
communiqués and from this point onwards, the
ALF was not mentioned.
• Greater focus on more moderate tactics eg letter
writing, boycotts and call-ins.
• Completely distanced itself from the radical flank
of the movement.
• Glasser: PETA is now ‘working within the
system rather than around it’.
Glasser 2011a
14. • Characteristics of bureaucracy:
• Clear hierarchy of offices.
• Level of power and fixed income relevant to a person’s position in the hierarchy.
• Candidates appointed and not elected.
• Central control.
• Administrative staff who are completely separated from the ownership of the means of
production.
Bureaucracy (Weber)
Weber, pp. 19-27
15. • Weber (p. 24): the ‘continual spread of bureaucratic administration’ to all
kinds of organisations, including ‘armies, political parties, economic
enterprises, organizations to promote all kinds of causes, private associations,
clubs, and many others.’
• George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society: the focus on ‘efficiency,
calculability, predictability and control’: corporate sector – all aspects of
society.
The Spread of Bureaucracy
16. McDonald’s Organisational Structure
Owner/operator
Store Manager
1st Assistant Manager 1st Assistant Manager
2nd Assistant Manager
Casual/Swing Manager Casual/Swing Manager
Crew trainers
Crew
• McDonald's paid 3
CEOs $22 million in
2004.
• Workers at the bottom
generally get paid
minimum wage and no
bonus for working
“undesirable” hours.
17. Social Movement Organisations – HSUS
- Wayne Pacelle’s
income: $252,540.00.
- Average HSUS
income: $68,095.11
(source).
18. Moderation in Social Movements
• Radicals realised they needed long-term organisation to make a
real difference – bureaucratic organisations with members and
offices, finance etc (Wallerstein, p. 659).
• Limited the degree to which these movements continued to be
anti-systemic – no longer threatened existing social structures
(Wallerstein, pp. 659-661).
• Eg civil rights movement (Allen).
19. Moderation and Resource Mobilisation
• Career benefits – organisational survival.
• Actions such as ‘giving money and signing a petition require little effort and imply no long
term involvement’ (McCarthy and Zald, p. 543) – maximise participation and resources.
• PETA (cited in Glasser 2011b): ‘our campaigns have proved extremely successful. In the
three decades since PETA was founded, it has grown into the largest animal rights group in
the world, with more than 2 million members and supporters worldwide’.
• Organisational factors eg donor base is merely one way to measure success in social
movements – larger, more professionalised organisations.
• NPIC = increasingly narrow focus, greater desire for funding (Smith).
Pendergrast 2015
20. “Single Issue” Movements
• Intersectionality (Crenshaw).
• Organisations focused on just one particular issue tend to ‘develop a larger base of
supporters’ and are also more likely to attract resources, funds and political allies
(Glasser 2011b).
• INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence offered a half year grant of $100,000
from the Ford Foundation. Ford reversed the decision because they found out that
INCITE supported the Palestinian struggle against occupation (Smith).
• Taking on more causes can shrink the donor base = grassroots activism has greater
capacity to be intersectional.
Pendergrast 2018a
22. Conclusion
• Ideological and emotional concerns also play a role (Pendergrast 2015, pp.
23-51).
• nicholas.pendergrast@unimelb.edu.au
• My publications are available at: https://theconversation.com/profiles/nick-
pendergrast-5089
23. References
• Aavik, K. 2018, ‘The animal advocacy movement in the Baltic states: links to other social justice issues and possibilities for intersectional
activism’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 49(4), 509-527.
• Allen, R. L. 2007, first published 1969, ‘From Black Awakening in Capitalist America’ in The Revolution will not be Funded: Beyond the Non-profit
Industrial Complex, ed. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, 53-62. Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.: South End Press.
• Alloun, E. (2018). ‘That’s the beauty of it, it’s very simple!’ Animal rights and settler colonialism in Palestine–Israel’, Settler Colonial Studies, 8(4),
559-574.
• Creenaun, cited in Courtice, B. 2011, ‘Testing the carbon price against reality’, Green Left Weekly.
• Crenshaw, K. 1989, ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist
Theory and Antiracist Politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1, 139-167.
• Deckha, M. 2008, ‘Disturbing Images: Peta and the Feminist Ethics of Animal Advocacy’ in Ethics and the Environment, 13(2), 35-76.
• Glasser, C. L. 2011a. Moderates and Radicals Under Repression: The U.S. Animal Rights Movement, 1990-2010, Department of Sociology, University
of California, Irvine.
24. References (cont)
• Glasser, C. L. 2011b. ‘Tied Oppressions: An Analysis of How Sexist Imagery Reinforces Speciesist
Sentiment’, The Brock Review 12(1), 51-68.
• Klein, N. 2014, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, Simon & Schuster.
• McCarthy, J. D., and M. N. Zald. 2001, ‘The Enduring Vitality of the Resource Mobilization Theory of Social
Movements’ in Handbook of Sociological Theory, ed. J. H. Turner, 533-566. New York, U.S.A.: Springer.
• Newkirk, I. 2011, ‘A Pragmatic Fight for Animal Rights’, The Guardian.
• Petray, T. & Pendergrast, N. 2018, ‘Challenging power and creating alternatives: Integrationist, anti-systemic
and non-hegemonic approaches in Australian social movements’, Journal of Sociology, 54(4). Open access
version available here.
• Pendergrast, N. 2018a, ‘PETA, Patriarchy and Intersectionality’ in Animal Studies Journal, 7(1), 59-79.
25. References (cont)
• Pendergrast, N. 2018b, ‘Intersectional Advocacy Tends To Bring In Less Money’, Faunalytics.
• Pendergrast, N. 2015, A Sociological Examination of the Contemporary Animal Advocacy Movement: Organisations,
Rationality and Veganism, PhD thesis, Curtin University.
• Ritzer, G. 2000, The McDonaldization of Society, Thousand Oaks, U.S.A.: Pine Forge Press.
• Smith, A. 2007. Introduction: The Revolution will not be Funded. In The Revolution will not be Funded: Beyond
the Non-profit Industrial Complex, ed. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, 1-20. Cambridge,
Massachusetts, U.S.: South End Press.
• Wallerstein, I. 2003, ‘Citizens All? Citizens Some! The Making of the Citizen’. Comparative Studies in Society and
History 45(4): 650-679.
• Weber, M. 1953. The Essentials of Bureaucratic Organisation: An Ideal-Type Construction. In Reader in
Bureaucracy, ed. R. K. Merton, A. P. Gray, B. Hockey and H. C. Selvin, 18-27. New York, U.S.A.: Free Press.
26. Acknowledgement of Images Used
• Student Strike for Climate Action: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/student-climate-strike-its-our-future
• Say Yes to Climate Action: https://theconversation.com/obituary-australias-carbon-price-29217
• Capitalism is Killing the Planet: https://climateandcapitalism.com/2015/01/25/400-parts-per-million-class-
struggle/capitalism-killing-planet/
• Change the Date: https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2019/01/24/no-matter-which-day-country-chooses-host-its-
australia-day-i-will-not-be
• Why Should We Abolish Australia Day?:
https://www.facebook.com/WARcollective/photos/a.746899418738953/2014518078643741/?type=3&theater
• Invasion Day Rally: https://twitter.com/jillyfrees/status/956711762698502144
• Vegan Australia Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2owhgl3I9w
