Cracking Under Pressure

Social movements excite and energize their participants in their early phases, with expectations high and ambitions yet unchecked by reality. Consequently, the academic study of social movements has focused primarily on the stages of mobilization and growth. But all movements eventually decline, and it is important to understand why they do, when they do, and what the effects of decline are.

Lynn Owens aims to broaden and enrich social movement theory by focusing on this phase of decline. He does so through a close investigation of the fate of the squatters' movement in Amsterdam, which emerged in the late 1970s as a reaction to the housing shortage of the 1960s, peaked in the early 1980s at some 10,000 participants, and then fell into a period of prolonged decline. As a movement significant for its influence on radical movements elsewhere in Europe and for its contribution to Amsterdam's reputation as a center of countercultural activity, this case study affords an opportunity to examine not only why movements decline but also how--how activists respond to decline first by downplaying it, then by debating it, and finally by adjusting to it.

Owens is particularly interested in the subjective experience and culture of decline and focuses on three central aspects: the role of narratives in giving meaning to events, both producing and constraining action; the incorporation of the management of emotions into the institutions and practices of the movement; and the complex relationship between culture and politics, with decline spurring clashes over which to emphasize, conflicts with important consequences for the movement's outcome.