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An Insider's Critique of the Social Movement Framing Perspective *
Author(s) -
Benford Robert D.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
sociological inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.446
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1475-682X
pISSN - 0038-0245
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-682x.1997.tb00445.x
Subject(s) - framing (construction) , sociology , epistemology , popularity , social movement , insider , reductionism , neglect , elite , extant taxon , reification (marxism) , social science , positive economics , social psychology , political science , psychology , law , politics , philosophy , structural engineering , evolutionary biology , psychiatry , engineering , economics , biology
In the last decade the framing perspective has gained increasing popularity among social movement researchers and theorists. Surprisingly, there has been no critical assessment of this growing body of literature. Though the perspective has made significant contributions to the movements literature, it suffers from several shortcomings. These include neglect of systematic empirical studies, descriptive bias, static tendencies, reification, reductionism, elite bias, and monolithic tendencies. In addition to a critique of extant movement framing literature, I offer several remedies and illustrate them with recent work. The articles by Francesca Polletta, John H. Evans, Sharon Erickson Nepstad, and Ira Silver in this special section address several of the concerns raised in this critique and, in so doing, contribute to the integration of structural and cultural approaches to social movements.