American writer and sociologist
James Macdonald Jasper (born 1957) is a writer and sociologist who has taught Ph.D. students at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York since 2007. He is best known for his research and theories about culture and politics, especially the cultural and emotional dimensions of protest movements.
Biography.
Jasper was born on September 30, 1957, in Takoma Park, Maryland, adjacent to Washington, D.C. His parents, Jane Howard-Jasper (born Betty Jane Howard) and James Dudley Jasper, separated just before he was born, and he was raised exclusively by his mother.
Jasper was prepared at Saint James School, where he was elected Senior Prefect and graduated in the Class of 1975. He thence attended Harvard College where he received the Bachelor of Arts "magna cum laude" in economics(1979). He was awarded the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from University of California at Berkeley (1988).
Jasper taught at New York University from January 1987 to the summer of 1996, leaving after a protracted tenure battle that attracted angry letters from sociologists around the United States. In the following ten years he taught as a visiting professor at Columbia University, Princeton University, and the New School for Social Research. Since the fall of 2007 he has been affiliated with the sociology Ph.D. program of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he founded the Politics and Protest Workshop.
Scholarship.
Jasper has been writing about politics and culture since the mid-1980s. His books include "Nuclear Politics", about energy policy in France, Sweden, and the United States; "The Animal Rights Crusade", an examination of the moral dimensions of protest coauthored with Dorothy Nelkin; "The Art of Moral Protest", which developed cultural understandings of social movements and reintroduced emotions as an analytic dimension; "Restless Nation", which looks at the negative and positive effects of Americans’ propensity to move so often; and "Getting Your Way", which offers a sociological language for talking about strategic action that avoids the determinism of game theory.
In recent years Jasper has turned from empirical studies of politics and protest to theoretical work on culture and politics. His most influential contribution has been to show that emotions are a part of culture, allowing humans to adapt to the world around them, to process information, and to engage with others. He differs from many culturally oriented scholars in embracing a kind of methodological individualism, insisting that beliefs, frames, collective identities, and emotions have an effect only through individuals.
Jasper has collaborated on a number of projects with Jeff Goodwin, a sociologist at New York University, including the edited books "Rethinking Social Movements", "The Contexts Reader", and the four-volume "Social Movements". Goodwin, Jasper, and Francesca Polletta together edited "Passionate Politics".
From 2005 to 2007 Jasper and Goodwin edited "Contexts" magazine, bringing trademark humor to the American Sociological Association’s magazine intended to reach popular audiences. Jasper also used the pen name Harry Green to write a controversial column called “the Fool” at the back of each issue.
In addition to Jeff Goodwin, Dorothy Nelkin, and Francesca Polletta, Jasper's coauthors have included former students Scott Sanders, Jane Poulsen, Cynthia Gordon, and Mary Bernstein.
With political scientist Clifford Bob, Jasper began editing a book series, the" Oxford Studies in Culture and Politics", in 2010.
The Art of Moral Protest.
In "The Art of Moral Protest", Jasper makes several important contributions to social movement theory. Some of these contributions are explained below.
Citizenship/post-citizenship distinction.
Jasper draws an important distinction between citizenship and post-citizenship movements. Citizenship movements are "organized by and on behalf of categories of people excluded in some way from full human rights, political participation, or basic economic protections." Almost by definition, then, citizenship movements make their claims primarily against the state, which generally serves as the original granter and primary enforcer of rights and other protections. Claims can, of course, also be made against other large bodies that grant rights or protections, e.g., corporations. Examples of citizenship movements include "industrial workers, women, and later racial and ethnic minorities."
Post-citizenship movements, on the other hand, are "composed of people already integrated into their society’s political, economic, and educational systems." Since such people already possess the benefits of normal citizenship, they may “pursue protections or benefits for others," additional non-citizenship benefits for themselves, or both. Note that since "others" are not necessarily categories of people, post-citizenship movements do not always make their claims against the state. Examples of post-citizenship movements include “protection of the environment, peace and disarmament, alternative healing, life-style protections, and animal rights." Environmental protesters may lobby particular states for policy changes, but their target may be the wider public. For instance, protesters who encourage individual consumers to recycle their glass and plastic containers may be less concerned with making claims against the state than with disseminating an important message as widely as possible. In addition, protesters may be seeking benefits for themselves as well, e.g., the opportunity to bond with a group of like-minded people. Such benefits are what Jasper calls the "pleasures of protest."
Four dimensions of protest.
In Chapter 3, Jasper advances a model of social movements containing four "autonomous dimensions": resources, strategy, culture, and biography. Jasper thinks that one major advantage of his model is its ability to draw on the respective strengths of prior theories—crowd theory, rational choice theory, resource mobilization, and political opportunity—while not overstretching any single dimension of protest. For example, he thinks that resource mobilization theory conflates strategy with resources. By isolating these various dimensions analytically, Jasper aims to show how they interact while retaining their respective logics.
Brief definitions of each of these dimensions can be given as follows. According to Jasper, resources are understood as "physical technologies and their capacities, or the money to buy these technologies." An example of a resource is a social movement organization's computers, or the funds used to purchase them. Secondly, strategy is defined as "the choices made by individuals and organizations in their interactions with other players, especially opponents." For example, a social movement organization’s choice to march in the street instead of filing a lawsuit constitutes a strategic choice. Third, culture can be understood as "shared understandings (emotional, moral, and cognitive) and their embodiments." For example, a group of animal rights activists might share the belief that all life is sacred. By Jasper’s definition, this belief can be considered part of the group’s culture. Lastly, biography is considered by Jasper to be the "individual constellations of cultural meanings, personalities, sense of self, derived from biographical experiences." For example, one of the aforementioned animal rights activists might have seen animal cruelty at a dog pound, an individual experience which has made him or her highly sensitive to the needs and condition of animals.
"Tastes in tactics".
Of particular interest is Jasper’s identification of a significant way in which culture and biography influence strategy: different protestors have different "tastes in tactics." Different protesters have different tastes, and these are a result of “a complex process combining rational assessments of a range of tactics, moral and affective valuations of those tactics, and the recruitment of new participants with no investment in prior tactics." For example, a social movement organization may initially be composed of protesters who largely think that non-violent mass demonstrations are the best form of protest. Various cultural and biographical factors might explain this preference: perhaps these protesters are college students who place great value on the teachings of Gandhi. This organization may then give way to a new crop of protesters who are not so invested in these prior tactics; they may even consciously eschew the nonviolent ways of their predecessors in order to differentiate themselves.
References.
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