Ideas and Symbols as Resources in Intrareligious Conflict: The Case of American Mennonites

Abstract

One of the important current debates in the study of social and social conflict concerns the role of cultural or ideological factors. The resource mobilization theories that have dominated the field, at least in American sociology, have emphasized the role of material and potitical resoulces in their explanations. McCarthy and Zald (1977) go the furthest in this respect, but Tilly ( 1978), Gamson ( 1990), and others working from this perspective have also suggested that ideas and symbols are epiphenomenal or are irrelevant for understanding the process of a social movement or conflict. The new social movements approach originating in Europe (e.g., Melucci 1980) is an alternative to resource mobilization accounts, but critics have pointed out that the neglect or mistreatment of ideal factors is also characteristic of this approach.1 Though new social movements theorists view as engaged in symbolic activ ities of identity construction and self-expression, they see the content of that activity as an epiphenomenon of social structural changes under late capitalism. Recently scholars, attempting a rapprochement between the American resource mobilization theories and the European new social movements approach, have begun a reconsideration of the role of ideal or cultural factors. For example, Snow, McAdam, and others (e.g., Snow & Benford 1988; McAdam 1988) focus on how cultural resources like grievances, values, ideas, and symbols can be intentionally appropriated and manipulated as resources. They focus on the micromobilization contexts where cultural changes or structural shifts are translated into ideas and agendas for action. Klandermans and Tarrow ( 1988:15) suggest that comparative analysis is another way forward. Comparison of more