Transcript Empowerment dynamics in collective action: Elaborating social identity and social change.

Empowerment dynamics in collective action:
Elaborating social identity and social change
John Drury
University of Sussex, UK
Symposium:
The positive crowd:
Psychological and social dimensions
15th General Meeting of the
European Association of Experimental Social Psychology
Opatija, Croatia, June 10-14th 2008
‘Positive psychology’ in the crowd
• Atmosphere and positive emotion
• Comfort and enjoyment
• Mutual aid and resilience
(a) The crowd can also be a socially positive force
(b) the psychological and the social are connected through
the Elaborated Social Identity Model of empowerment
dynamics
Empowerment – a definition
• ‘positive social-psychological transformation,
related to a sense of being able to (re)shape the
social world, which takes place for members of
subordinated groups who overturn (or at least
challenge) existing relations of dominance’
• Hence refers not only to psychological
(subjective) change but (objective) changes in
social relations
The ESIM of
empowerment dynamics
Indiscriminate outgroup action, shared fate,
history…(the conditions that create a crowd)

Unity (shared self-categorization)

Expectations of mutual support

Power

Collective self-objectification
1.
Indiscriminate outgroup action,
shared fate…
Antecedents of collective unity:
• Proximal: indiscriminate, illegitimate action by an
outgroup against a physical crowd…
• Distal: history of intergroup relations
2. Unity: shared self-categorization
Example: Subjective sense of unity through
indiscriminate exclusion from ‘common land’:
P5: So that was the turning point because I think that was
the point at which any kind of division between people
from the outside and people, local people, just suddenly
dissolved. Everyone knew that they were really fighting
for exactly the same thing and a really strong bond
developed between everyone that was there on that day.
Even though many of us had never met each other or
known each other before.
[tree-dressing ceremony] (Drury & Reicher, 2005)
3. Expectations of mutual support…
…for ingroup normative action
Shared identity produces expectations of shared
definitions of reality
[How did she feel able to join in pushing?]
H: Just the support of everyone else, it really was
yeah just everyone was doing it and everybody
was all charged up really
[Exeter anti-poll tax protest, 1990]
(Drury & Reicher, 1999)
4. Power
P5: It was almost it was almost as if that kind of
sent a kind of wave of- a wave of kind of
empowerment through a lot of people, including
protesters. I think a lot of people [ ] suddenly
realized that they could actually- they could
actually take take some responsibility for what
was going on and actually take control.
[tree-dressing ceremony] (Drury & Reicher, 2005)
5. Collective self-objectification
CSO: action which serves to realize participants’ social
identity (and hence their definition of proper practice)
over against the power of dominant outgroups.
That felt really brilliant, cos it was just… I don’t know,
there’s something about overcoming opposition. Like if
we’d just walked out of the tube station and walked
straight onto the road, it wouldn’t have been as good, as
having to have got round the police lines first. So it was
that kind of, you know, makes you feel more like you’ve
achieved something.
[Reclaim the Streets party]
(Drury, Cocking, Beale, Hanson & Rapley, 2005)
CSO is a function of empowerment but is itself
empowering!
Four features of empowerment
1. Empowerment as outcome as well as
precondition of action (i.e. How self-action
can change self)
2. Emotion and well-being
3. Taking part in further action
4. Generalization and limits of empowered
identities
1. Empowerment → CSO → empowerment
or How self-action can change self
• When our action against a powerful outgroup
serves to change the world to reflect our identity,
such an action-outcome thereby evidences that
we are powerful. The self-changed context
reflects back to the world-changing self.
2. Emotion and well-being
• Empowerment is associated with positive feelings
Why?
Action which affirms the collective self in relation to
dominant illegitimate outgroup forces should feel lifeenhancing, joyful and positive
P6: That tremendous feeling when the fences went over
and people just felt so powerful, as they rightly should, in
that situation.
[No M11 ‘tree dressing ceremony] (Drury & Reicher, 2005)
• CSO was best predictor of positive emotion
in empowerment (Drury et al., 2005)
3. Taking part in further action
It was empowering in the sense that after that I
had a lot of energy and, you know, the feeling
after that ‘Wow!’, you know, we can do anything,
and I personally can, you know, do things, I think
that was quite important cos then, you know, we
decided to do Reclaim the Streets [ ] feeling like
I’m actually capable of doing it
[No M11 Claremont Road eviction] (Drury et al.,
2005)
3. Taking part in further action (cont.)
Unity was the best predictor of reports of further
action, with CSO second (Drury et al., 2005)
Why?
Perceiving the unity/support as enduring and
ongoing (crowd event as part of social
movement)
Perceiving self as powerful in an enduring sense –
CSO as a lasting impact
4. Generalization and limits
of empowered identities
H1. Limits
The same positive achievement may be differentially
empowering to different groups as a function of its
relevance to their differing social identities.
Some evidence: Experimental analogue (Drury & Cocking, in
preparation)
• Two nominal identities imposed: Sussex students as ‘valuing
accuracy’ versus ‘valuing creativity’
• Cover story: ‘does your performance match your values’?
• A series of ‘tests of mental abilities’
• Half the ‘accuracy value’ ps told they’d done well at accuracy
(identity relevant) but badly at creativity (identity irrelevant), half told
the opposite. Equivalent pattern for ‘accuracy’ ps.
4. Generalization and limits
of empowered identities (cont.)
• Results: Subjective success self-reports
identity-irrelevant
identity-relevant
Mean
5.69
6.15
Std. Error
.16
.16
(Controlling for subjective value of creativity)
4. Generalization and limits
of empowered identities (cont.)
H2 If identity is defined broadly, empowerment generalizes to
other issues/actions
CP6: I’ve progressed in that now I would, given time permitting
and everything else, I would actually go and help in another
campaign somewhere else even if it’s only for a day if there’s a
rally or something, which is what I said to this policeman,
actually I said ‘I would actually go and help in a campaign like
the north-circular or elsewhere for the day and that would
make me an outsider there wouldn’t it’, and he said ‘yes well I
suppose it would’ [ ] that’s what I’m saying when I said become
more radical; I would actually take time out to help somebody
else rather than just sort of being at the end of my road and
then once that’s gone forget it, that - actually determined to
keep on with the whole roads programme, fighting it wherever.
[No M11 campaign interview]
(Drury, Reicher & Stott, 2003)
ESIM as a virtuous cycle of
empowerment
Empowerment feeds into a positive cycle of
social change where:
• the self becomes more powerful
• collective action is joyful
• there is ongoing support for further action
• self is re-defined to broaden (a) the issues/goals
(b) the boundaries of the ingroup
Why collective action does not always take the
form of a positive cycle of social change
1. Empowerment does not always occur in
collective action
– various contingencies (some of which are social
structural rather than psychological – e.g., resources,
means of communication, outgroup power)
2. Theorizing disempowerment
3. Empowerment declines/ends (provisionality)
– Outgroup/establishment re-asserts itself (e.g. arrest,
reaction)
So what kind of model of identity do we need?
Four features of an ontology of the self adequate
to theorizing a world-changing self:
1. Collective (enjoyment, resilience, collective
empowerment)
2. Changing as a function of changes in
social relations (variability and
transformation)
3. Legitimate action oriented (explains why
only certain experiences feel good)
4. Intentional but acting in a context not
(wholly) of one’s choosing (from modest
actions to social change)
‘Empowerment dynamics in collective action:
Elaborating social identity and social change’
The same processes of dynamic selfcategorization that produce positive
psychological experiences also explain
how it is possible that crowds can
change society itself in a positive
direction.