Value of Participant Observation

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goals. Many field workers use both methods together effectively, and wecertainly benefit from both. Each of these qualitative methods produces adifferent kind of evidence, however, an d each has its own strengths andweaknesses.

This paper shows what participant-observation can teach us about themeanings of movements that would be difficult if not impossible to learnthrough other methods alone. To be sure, no one method can take on allof the questions we ought to ask about the meanings of social movements.And participant-observation studies can address questions differerent fromthose I will introduce here. As exemplary studies of social and religiousmovements have shown us,1 though, participant-observation is especiallysuited fo r asking questions about everyday, often taken-for-granted mean-ings of activism.

WHAT PARTICIPANT-OBSERVATION CAN REVEALABOUT MEANING IN MOVEMENTS

Activists, as a recent outpouring of scholarship attests, create meaningsactively (Johnston and Klandermans 1995; Larana, Johnston, and Gusfield1994; Morris and Mueller 1992; Mc Adam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996).They strategize ideological frames that will appeal to the public and out-smart organizations with competing agendas. They project identities thatmake dissenting views both more meaningful to their holders and morevisible to the state. They enact rituals of solidarity and conversion that helppeople over the divide between bystander and participant and sustain themafter the jump. In search of an elusive balance, successful social movementsre-work pre-existing traditions and ideologies, enough to promote politicaland cultural change, but not so much that activists become disempoweringlymarginal. Movement scholarship has tended to view meaning, then, as anobject of strategic action. Frequently, the assumption is that activists createand project their meanings very intentionally, in accordance with interestsand structures that scholars conceive as outside of culture (Hart 1996). Par-ticipant-observation studies help us understand these explicit meaningswithinterpretive depth.

Students of movements have begun to argue that we can also benefitfrom attending to what Wuthnow and Witten (1988) have called implicitculture, or what I will call implicit meanings.These are the meanings thatactivists tend to take for granted as they are innovating explicit ideologies,identities, and rituals. Studies are showing that implicit meanings enableand constrain what activists can do together, or even imagine doing to-gether (Hart 1996; Kane 1997; Emirbayer and Goodwin 1996; Lichterman

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forthcoming, 1997, 1996, 1995b). These studies use a variety of differentculture concepts, and a variety of research methods, to find and interpretthese implicit meanings.2

Recent research points out the importance of a particular kind of im-plicit meaning, one that participant-observation is well-suited to tapping.This research argues that we will understand more about not only socialmovements bu t volunteer groups and a variety of informal public groups ifwe attend closely to what it means to be a member, what it means to bepublicly involved (Eliasoph 1998, 1996; Eliasoph and Lichterman 1997;Lichterman forthcoming, 1996,1995a, 1995b). By observing and participatingin action as the action is happening, we can discover the meaning of grouplife itself, which activist groups as much as other groups must take fo rgranted most of the time in order to keep working together. We might con-ceive these meanings as "practices," (Bourdieu 1990,1977), "civic practices"(Eliasoph 1998, 1996; Eliasoph and Lichterman 1997), "cultures of commit-ment" (Lichterman 1996), or "perspectives" (Becker 1961), among otherways. The conceptual differences between these approaches constitute animportant and separate topic, and get elaboration elsewhere (Eliasoph andLichterman 1997; Eliasoph 1996). For present purposes, these concepts allcall our attention to the mostly taken-for-granted assumptions about the pur-pose of group life that are embedded in everyday interaction.

M y purpose here is to highlight the value of participant-observation instudying these kinds of implicit meanings. I will develop this theme in re-lation to social movement studies only, and draw examples from activistgroups explored in my book on political commitment (Lichterman 1996), aproject on sexual identity politics (Lichterman forthcoming), and a co-authored paper on styles of civic life (Eliasoph and Lichterman 1997). BelowI present three areas of inquiry that can benefit from a participant-observer'sforays into implicit meanings: the ways activists practice citizenship throughparticipating in movements, the ways they build group ties, and the waysthey define being an activist. I show how participant-observers can discoverthese implicit meanings by paying special attention to group tensions, andthe ways activists place themselves in the wider society.

Movements as Forums for Active CitizenshipWe think of activists as storming barricades, lying down in roads, con-fronting police. But just as frequently, activists discuss. Activists draw up

position statements, argue about public issues, and occasionally argue aboutwhat they should be discussing. Sometimes these discussions are strategysessions in which activists are figuring out which definition of the issue will

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get the broadest following or the widest press coverage. Sometimes activistsare discussing because they want to figure out their opinions as membersof society, as citizens. Strategy sessions and mutual learning sessions maycoincide; in any event, discussion may mean more than strategizing alone(cf. McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996; Hart 1996). Theorists of democ-racy point to grassroots movements as places in which people practice anddeepen citizenship as an end in itself (Fraser 1992; Mouffe 1993; Cohenand Arato 1992). Throughout U.S. history, grassroots movements have beencrucial sites fo r Americans to discuss ne w opinions and new identities evenapart from strategizing for power or resources (Goodwyn 1978; Flacks 1988;Fraser 1992; Boyte 1992; Cohen and Arato 1992). Participant-observationcan help us learn to what degree a movement acts as a workshop of de-mocracy.

I have argued that we should study activist groups in their capacity asforums fo r citizenly, self-critical discussion of opinions (Lichterman forth-coming). Movement groups contain a "forum" to the extent they allow in-teractional space fo r critically reflective discussion apart from strategicconcerns. The ways groups balance or blend strategic and forum-like dis-cussion is an empirical question that the forum concept enables us to ask."Forum" denotes a level of analysis, a way of seeing. To use the forumlens, we probe conversation amongst activists in natural settings to see howmuch and what kind of open-ended exchange the group or setting allows.Do they assume that the purpose of talking is to decide the most strategicway to present interests that they presume don't need exploring, or do theytalk in order to figure out what their interests and opinions are? Theseassumptions are important elements of implicit culture.

Viewing the U.S. Green movement through the forum lens, for exam-ple, I found that Green meetings entertained a lot of free-flowing discus-sion during meetings, about a range of issues from county supervisors'candidacies to regional ecosystems, to the fate of Green parties around theworld. Groups affiliated with the U.S. Green movement organized entiremeetings devoted to discussing local political issuessometimes by break-ing into small groups so that veteran members and new visitors alike coulddiscuss an issue intensively and then re-group to decide a Green movementposition on the issue. Green movement groups also sponsored a variety ofpublic speaker series and panels on topics ranging from economic decen-tralization to alternative spiritualities, to multicultural movement-building.Active audiences helped make these events into forums for opinion, notsimply exercises in polite, public comportment. These publicly advertisedevents also made money for the groups, but that does not detract fromtheir importance as sites of active citizenship. Another grassroots environ-

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mental group that I studied sold candy to make money; financial needsalone do not dictate the ways groups organize to meet them.Ma ny post-1960s movements have been characterized as "identitymovements" because of the work that they do to affirm difference alongsexual, gender, racial or ethnic lines. In contrast with some of the familiarimages of identity politics as shrill, selfishly self-affirming, or fragmentingfor public discussion (Hughes 1993; Gitlin 1995), participant-observationreveals that identity-based activist groups may also host forums for criticaldiscussion that crosses identity lines and promotes a sense of public-spirit-edness. Beginning a research project on sexual identity politics, I first at-tended a "queer" activist group meeting expecting to hear angry rantsagainst straights, and separatist bravado. I was surprised to see that thegroup not only devoted time to mulling over current events and exchangingnews stories in civil tones, but it held evening "cafe" events with speak-outsessions, and workshops on local politics. In the group slogan's own terms,queers could be "people of all sexual orientations" who support lesbianand gay rights, but who also insist on speaking with an eye for multiplesources of injustice or privilege, rather than promoting a singularly gay-focussed agenda. To be "queer," in fact, meant discussing the relations be -tween sexual minority and varied other identity groupsAfricanAmericans, single mothers, welfare recipients. Queer activists valued talkingfo r more than affirming one's own group identity.

Of course other methods ca n inform us , too, about th e kind of foruma movement group can sustain. Historical researchers or discourse analystscan read group newsletters, for instance, to get a sense of how ideologicallyelaborate, or public-spirited, or strategically-minded a group's discussionhas tended to be. A benefit of participant-observation is that it reveals thelimits of acceptable discussion, showing us what kinds of topics strain mem-bers' tolerancetopics that may not make it into print. The forum of asuburban citizens' environmental group provides an illustration.

Airdale Citizens for Environmental Sanity (ACES) faced special chal-lenges in making its own group, let alone its rallies and "town meetings,"a forum for developing opinion. In ACES's local suburban milieu, politepeople did not question public authorities the way ACES sometimes didby challenging the waste disposal practices of a large local firm, Microtech.Good citizens in Airdale were "concerned about our families" and not"radical anarchists," in the narrowly dichotomous terms of one member.Influenced by the privatism of Airdale, ACES members were not comfort-able, even inside their own meetings, with someone who advocated stronglyfo r a particular ideological position. The implicit meanings behind the fo-rum in ACES made such discussion taboo.



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ACES achieved a tenuous balance between suburban civility and criti-cal citizenship by welcoming members to question Microtech's policies asa form of "personal empowerment." Within the group's implicit meanings,breaking through the privatism by "expressing oneself" was acceptable aslong as one shared a respect for other members' privacy. Anyone had aright to sincere self-expression as long as it did not unduly infringe onsomeone else's. In this way, ACES members upheld the suburban, civicprivatism of Airdale even as they found ways to puncture it. The groupagreed that its leader was effective because she gave people space to beindividuals and contribute only as much as they wanted to, without com-pelling anyone to affirm any particular ideology or political tradition.

ACES activists did break through the suburban privatism, by discussingthe morality and politics of Microtech at some length in their meetings.They talked, too, about toxics battles in faraway locales, and reached outto related environmental issues not immediately part of their original strug-gle. ACES held town meetings intended to encourage Airdalers to developopinions about Microtech and speak them publicly. The group becameknown, in fact, as a comfortable forum for trying out dissenting opinionsabout Microtechcomfortable enough for people wary of activism in gen-eral, like Liz. Liz had recently put together that Microtech's handling oftoxic waste years before may have precipitated her son's chronic healthproblems; the realization made her angry. Yet, I saw none of the angerwhile petitioning with Liz against Microtech's proposed toxic waste incin-erator. Standing with my petition board next to Liz in Airdale's sun-baked,treeless, shopping mall parking lots, I heard nothing but unfailing polite-ness. One day I asked Liz why she was so circumspect with passing shoppersand so accomodating of wary store managers. Lizexplained that "Microtechhad not been confrontational," so she didn't want to be confrontationaleither. Even if Microtech's practices risked Airdalers' health, it was notexcuse enough for Liz to risk making a scene.

ACES's occasional tensions around John, the one ideologically out-spoken member of ACES, brought the implicit meaning of the group's fo-rum into high relief for a participant-observer. While I heard othermembers puzzling over whether or not they were "really" activists becausenone of them had ever been arrested, septuagenarian John declared mat-ter-of-factly that he was perfectly ready to go to jail for the cause of chal-lenging Microtech. While even the ACES leader, Laura, was taken abackby the strident style of the group's Greenpeace liaison, observing after ameeting one night that "my mother taught me to be polite!", John in con-trast bellowed from his seat at a public hearing that Microtech was a"greedy capitalist institution." I felt members' own discomforts just fromwatching them endure John: They sustained awkward silences, fingered

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pencils nervously, or froze their expressions in polite attention when helaunched into one of his short tirades against capitalism. Clearly, Johnstretched the implicit meaning of discussion in ACES. He compromisedother members' personal space by pushing a particular ideological stance.If ACES members felt uncomfortable hearing strongly ideological ra-tionales for criticizing Microtech even among themselves, then those kindsof ideological discourse would not be available when forum-like discus-sions became more purely strategic framing discussions. Protesters froma metropolitan center visited Airdale on occasion, bringing a radical en-vironmentalist critique with them. ACES may have produced more fruitfullinks with these activists had it adopted a more ideologically elaborateopposition, instead of contenting itself with calmly enumerating Micro-tech's environmental risks at public hearings. But the cultural taken-for-granteds of Airdale limited the kind of ideological discussion this groupwould engage, and that in turn made some kinds of frames off limits fromthe start.

As these scenarios suggest, implicit meanings are not necessarily dif-ficult to discern. But activists may not discuss them readily in an interview.The Greens' and queer activists' zest for critical discussion made it clearto a participant-observer that the forum was a central feature of theirgroups. They wanted to exercise active citizenship as an end in itself. ACESmembers, too, valued their group as a place to try out opinions, withinlimits; for them, discussing the moral issues behind toxic risks in Airdalewas not simply a distraction from "real business." Differences in implicitmeanings made the forum characteristics of ACES somewhat different fromthose of the Green or queer groups. And these different meanings are re-lated to the different kinds of ties activists create between leaders, othermembers, and movement networks. Group ties and organizational struc-ture, too, get created through implicit meanings.

The Meaning of Group Ties and OrganizationI was surprised: I thought I knew what "consensus process" meant.

Having done grassroots politics and having studied other environmentalists,I assumed that an accurate picture of "consensus" had to include intensivediscussion, a queue of people waiting to take their turn to speak, suddencrescendos of unanimity or polarization, high-minded sophistry and pettywrangling. When Laura of ACES said during our first phone chat that thegroup "made decisions by consensus," I was intrigued at the prospect ofstucco ranch-style homes with sunken living rooms ringing with intense,lengthy, dramatic, uneven discussion. And I had it wrong.



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The "consensus" that ACES practiced was little like the anti-hierar-chical yet elaborate, self-disciplining process that many activists learnedfrom the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and 80s. At ACES meetingsthe leader did a majority of the talking. She introduced the great bulk ofagenda items, suggested ne w projects, an d gingerly coaxed other membersthrough what sh e called th e "baby steps" that would give them more en-franchisement in the group. Echoing other members, on e longtime memberof ACES said in an interview that the consensus process worked becauseACES had a good leader. Other grassroots activists I'd studied would havepuzzled over this seeming contradiction in terms; consensus decision-mak-ing was supposed to give everyone leader-like voice in a thoroughly egali-tarian group. I would not have encountered this little surprise at all had Isimply gone by the description of the group's organizational arrangementson paper: "We use a process called consensus and we strive for a non-sexist,non-racist, non-hierarchical structure."Participant-observation gives us a window on the implicit meaningsthat make organization in the abstract"non-hierarchical structure" or"grassroots movement" fo r instancemean very different things in differ-ent contexts. ACES members called theirs a grassroots movement with anon-hierarchical structure, bu t they saw no inconsistency between this des-ignation and the fact that their group had a long-term leader who carvedout most of the group's agenda most of the time. Though they listenedactively an d volunteered readily, members rarely questioned or amendedtheir leader's initiatives.Yet, in other environmental groups more consonant with the researchliterature's descriptions (Melucci 1989, 1988; Epstein 1991; Tarrow 1994;Larana, Johnston, and Gusfield 1994), a "grassroots", consensus-drivengroup would not willingly sustain a single leader with wide-ranging respon-sibility for the group as a whole. In the U.S. Green movement groups Istudied, the word "grassroots" itself meant intensive, personalized partici-pation by individuals, rather than active support for a leader who couldspeak fo r community members, as in ACES. Research literature on peace,anti-nuclear, and environmental groups run by consensus shows us heateddebates, rifts an d blow-ups precipitated by activists who failed to follow"good process" (Epstein 1991; Vogel 1980; Barkan 1979). Yet ACES mem-bers used the words "informal" and "loose" to describe the consensus proc-ess in their ow n group.Behind these different meanings of grassroots and consensus are dif-ferent, implicit meanings of group ties. By observing ne w members learninggroup routines, and by watching groups endure tense moments, we candiscover the implicit meanings of organizational structure that activistsan d often scholarstake fo r granted an d subsume under general terms like

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"decentralized movement." Many grassroots political groups work on mem-bers' shared assumption that people can and ought to participate as indi-vidually empowered agents of political change (Lichterman 1996). Thesegroups practice "personalized politics." They cohere on the basis of per-sonalized ties that give individuals both a lot of room for initiativeto startnew projects, for instanceand a lot of responsibility for the group's di-rection as a whole; each individual member fashions a personalized con-nection to the group. But some "decentralized movements," especiallythose in the community-organizing tradition, assume that a grassroots groupis one in which "the community" speaks as one, preferably in the voice ofone or two articulate leaders. These groups cohere on the basis of ties thatpeople create as fellow members of a sharply defined, often local, commu-nity, rather than as individual agents of political change. On the basis ofthese ties, activists assign responsibility and legitimacy differently than theydo on the basis of personalized ties.The different meanings matter. Decentralized movement groups thatdefine organizational legitimacy in terms of "the community" will facetough challenges if they discover that members of the community constructtheir interests differently. This was the case with a largely African-Americananti-toxics group I studied. Expecting seamless support from the commu-nity, group leaders were dismayed when an African-American woman spokeup at a public hearing in favor of a company charged with gross negli-genceand environmental racism. The woman pointed out that the com-pany had offered jobs to local youths. The fact of its Spanish-speakingownership further complicated any easy division between "the community"and the company. Group ties themselves, defined in local communitarianterms, made it difficult for members to understand let alone strategizearound people like the woman at the hearing. And groups that define or-ganizational legitimacy in terms of empowered individuals will have differ-ent challengesamong them, the challenge of maintaining a stable enoughpresence to make the group a viable coalition partner for other groupswith more conventional structures.

Activists, in sum, do not inhabit organizational structure in the ab-stract. They create and sustain structure through shared, implicit meaningsof group ties. These meanings result in very different strengths and weak-nesses for groups.

The Meaning of Being an ActivistNot surprisingly, many studies of social movements focus on how

movements define issues and develop visions of social change. Fewer stud-



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ies analyze what activism itself means to activists, what it means to go pub-lic. By hearing how activists talk about their own activism in everyday set-tings, participant-observers can bring some new insights to old questionsabout the motives for activism.

Recent sociological work on narrative forms points toward new waysto ask why people become activists.3 Sociologists of culture have increas-ingly heeded C. Wright Mills' directive that sociologists study motives byplumbing people's vocabularies rather than their psyches: Explaining peo-ple's motives, on this view, means listening for the ways people explain orjustify what they do, rather than treating motives as reflections of psycho-logical needs or social-structural interests that exist outside the world ofsymbols and meaning. Studies of activists' and volunteers' moral reasoningreveal that Americans draw on a relatively small repertoire of moral dis-courses to make their efforts meaningful in words (Wuthnow 1991; Bellahet al. 1985; Tipton 1982). Movement scholars too are examining how ac-tivists talk about why they got active, and why others should do so(Ginsburg 1989; Andrews 1991; Benford 1993). Often, the evidence forthese patterned vocabularies of motive comes from stories elicited in in-terviews. Such interviews enlighten us a great deal about the broader cul-tural repertoire available to activists.

Through participant-observation, we can supplement these elicited sto-ries with everyday storiesthe self-characterizations and rules of thumbthat people communicate in order to orient themselves to each other asthey are doing activism. Participant-observers can find out what traditions,symbols and stories make activism meaningful as it is happening in everydaylife. Field work can clarify ho w culture precipitates the move from privateto public life, and it can clarify which specific meanings are doing th e workin specific settings. An example will illustrate the point:

When I interviewed ACES member Barb, I asked how she knew heractivism was the right thing to do. Barb tried out several answers, noneof them entirely satisfying to her. I took the persona of gentle socraticinterlocutor, assisting her arrival at true knowledge of her own motives.Barb spoke first of her experience as a nurse, her quiet horror at seeingthe ravages of cancer. She connected her knowledge as a nurse with herskepticism about Microtech's operations, implying that she was an activistbecause she felt it was all too likely that Microtech's dangerous wasteswould produce more health disasters and hospital visits. When I observedthat not all nurses with her experience joined anti-toxics groups, Barb triedout a more general principle: Knowing there is a problem and not doinganything about it can make one feel bad. People who keep themselvesfrom thinking there is a problem will not feel bad, and hence do not have

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to do anything. She concluded, not quite convinced herself, that "it justfeels right" so she does it.Armed with a knowledge of moral vocabularies, one might have de-duced that Barb got into activism on the basis of expressive individualism,a moral standpoint that says good acts are ones that make us feel good,or enable us to express our own feelings and intuitions. One might con-clude, then, that to Barb, activism meant "expressing my feelings." Wemight expect Barb to remain an activist only as long as activism felt good.The trouble is that Barb had been an ACES member for over six years,had offered the group indispensible technical skills, and rarely if evertalked about her participation in terms of feelings or self-expression. Whilethe group as a whole shared a respect for individual opinions and didindeed encourage people to "express themselves" as I noted earlier, thisalso meant that someone like Barb was not compelled to talk about he rpersonal feelings in the group. She could "express herself" in some otherindividual way. Barb expressed herself by taking on quiet, behind-the-scenes responsibilities; no one delegated these to her just because her ownskills made them appropriate for her. The relatively few times she talkedabout activism itself, she made it sound like a responsibility, not an exer-cise in personal development. The point, then, is that Barb's interviewtalk might mislead us if we assume there is a straightforward connectionbetween a moral vocabulary elicited during an interview, and an activist'severyday group life.Like most other members of ACES, Barb rarely mentioned explicitlyany specific political or moral traditions behind her activism. I did discoverfrom a survey response that Barb considered herself a "mildly Catholic"person, and I knew she had married in a Catholic ceremony towards theclose of my study. But a search for potential ties between religious motivesarticulated in one context and activism enacted in other contexts mightmiss, or distort, the everyday, lived meaning of activism for Barb. Outsideof ACES meetings and events, the meaning of activism may well have takenon a faith-based inflection for Barb. But if we take discourses and traditionsarticulated in interviews or surveys to represent the complete meanin g ofactivism for activists, we miss the proximate, implicit meanings that may beat work in everday settings of activism i t s e l f .For this reason, I have made a point of listening for the ways thatactivists talk about activism during their own everyday rounds. In mystudy of grassroots environmentalists, for instance, I recorded in fieldnotes the self-descriptions, sayings, cautionary tales, or stories of con-sciousness-raising that people articulated in everyday settings such asmeetings and conversations over lunch. I listened for the traditions, ide-



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ologies, or cultural identities that activists brought up on their ow n whenthey talked about being activists. I proceeded on the notion that thesesayings, stories, traditions, or identit ies are reference points that help ac -tivists map themselves in a public world of groups, institutions, an d cul-tural authorities that is always ope n to more than on e mapping. In ACES,John had the habit of expounding on a kind of populist socialism; thatwas an important reference point for him. Liz had the habit of presentingherself as an upstanding citizen, an d told people repeatedly, "I'm notready to get arrested yet." And most ACES members shared a crucialset of reference points: Many of their cautionary tales, rules-of-thumb,and consciousness-raising stories highlighted the difficulties of breakingthrough Airdale's suburb an privatism. "Being an activist," fo r ACESmembers, meant being an activist in ambivalent relation to their own lo-cale. These ev eryday reference points, at least as much as ones elicitedduring interviews, are what enabled the activists to make sense to eachother, work together, day to day.In all, I discovered in everyday interaction what John Hewitt ha stermed social identi tythe part of our identity that we define "in relationto community and culture" (Hewitt 1989:172). Social identity is relational.We maintain it in relation to reference points like those I listened for inactivist settings. An d social identity is processual. The stories, teachings,and self-characterizations that activists impart to each other keep the proc-ess of identity going.Why, we might ask, would a sensitive interview not reveal the sametraditions, stories, or id entitie s we hear in eve ryday settings? The answeris that from a participant-observer's point of view, the interview is aninteractional event as much as any other setting (Mischler 1986; Briggs1986). Interview settings carry their own norms of interaction and elicitcertain kinds of talk. When asked to explain their motives, Americans inthe cultural mainstream will often tell a story of psychological develop-ment, of "personal growth" (Carbaugh 1990; see also Bellah et al. 1985).In many circles, it sounds educated or "enlightened" to use a psychologi-cal imagination, to talk of motives in terms of feelings or early familyrelationships. But the one-to-one interview setting cannot replicate thesettings of meetings, rallies, panels, or speak-outs, where other discoursesand reference points than those of therapeutic individualism will comeinto play. In some activist groups, people learn standard storylines thatthey can use to convince others, as well as themselves, that activism is ameaningful thing to do (Benford 1993). Such stories may well work along-side less intentio nally crafted , implicit culture that comes in the form ofeveryday reference points.

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trating attempts at alliance-building between largely white, middle-class ac-tivists and activists of color since the 1960s (Breines 1982; Anzaldua andMoraga 1982; Gregory 1984; Lichterman forthcoming). Participant-obser-vation work can address long-standing questions about how movementsgrow, and newer questions about multicultural movement-building, whenwe take into account what activists take for granted about the nature of agood organization, instead of colluding in their assumptions.I want to treat one other area of inquiry at somewhat greater length;it concerns the much-debated thesis that movements of women, youth, en-vironmentalists, people of color, or regional separatists in the past few dec-ades belong in a theoretical category of "new social movements" (NSMs)because their aims an d means differ from those of the long-establishedlabor movement. Lively debates about this theoretical category have gen-erated a great deal of conceptual innovation. But they have also generatedconfusion over what constitutes "newness" (Gamson 1991; Calhoun 1993;Melucci 1994, 1989). Without reviewing4 the extensive writings on new so-cial movements (NSMs) it will be helpful simply to note that according toproponents of the category, movements during and after the 1960s havetended to emphasize lifestyle or moral concerns over material ones, favorloose, decentralized, and/or participatory organizational styles over older,hierarchical models of authority, and make a search for individual andgroup identity a prominent part of their raison d'etre. Critics of the cate-gory have observed that nineteenth-century (not "new") American move-mentswomen's temperance advocates and religious communalists, forinstancealso promoted lifestyle and moral visions. And nineteenth cen-tury American labor movements, as well as commune settlements, evinceda search for identity, too, sometimes in very decentralized organizations(Calhoun 1993; Tarrow 1988).Viewing movements through participant-observation leads to the sug-gestion that we modify, though not reject entirely, some of the claims ofNSM theorists. On the one hand, some grassroots environmental move-ments that should "count" as NSMs do not look like movements describedby NSM theorists. To give just one example, a largely African-Americananti-toxics group I studied had a group style marked bydeference to leadersand limited participation. Members identified themselves with well-estab-lished traditions of black struggle and Christian charity; identity was muchmore a given than a quest. In short, the NSM category would not greatlyilluminate this groupnor others within the American community organ-izing traditioneven though the group pursued environmentalism, a cen-tral NSM issue according to proponents of the category.

On the other hand, some grassroots environmental groups do fit theNSM category, even if participant-observation reveals the category's limits

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as a sensitizing concept. U.S. Greens, for instance, have built a decentral-ized movement of participatory groups that raise broad lifestyle an d moralissues, from vegetarianism to the nature of humans' obligations to the earth,as well as issues conventionally defined as political. The movement has pro-moted members' self-expression within its local groups. Yet a closer lookreveals that even a movement seemingly well-suited to the NSM categorycomplicates the received terms of discussion. Greens may well promote self-expression within their groups, but not because personal growth is simplyan end in itself. Rather, fo r many Greens, "expressing oneself" means find-ing a personalized way to contribute to the greater group good, and thepublic good that the movement advocates. Public commitment, for them,is personally fulfilling. Participant-observation helps us discern what itmeans to "search for identity," whether that means self-absorption or,rather, self-realization in a public-spirited commmunity.

Participant-observers have an opportunity to refashion and perhaps re-place some of the terms of debate about NSMs, rather than rejecting NSMconcepts altogether, by starting with the lived, implicit meanings we findin the field. "Decentralized" or "participatory" organization may havemeant something quite different in the cultural universe of nineteenth cen-tury communalists, or even that of pacifists of the 1950s, than it does fo rmany contemporary activists like the U.S. Greens; the possibility is worthmore research. In a highly differentiated , religiously diverse U.S. with fe wshared understandings of what constitutes "the Left," the cultural and po-litical polestars of contemporary activists may be different from those ofearlier activists who could share a less ambivalent allegiance to socialist orChristian traditions. The meaning of group ties for some contemporary ac-tivists, then, may be relatively "new" as compared with their nineteenth-and earlier twentieth-century antecedents, because that meaning developsin relation to a different context; NSM theorist Melucci (1994) has sug-gested just this kind of focus on meanings.M y participant-observation work turns up at least three different kindsof group bonds that are prominent within contemporary movements taggedas NSMs: These are "personalized" bonds, "local communitarian" bonds,or "community of interest" bonds. Each type comes out of different, largertraditions, and each enables and constrains activists in different ways. Per-sonalized bonds, like those of the Greens described above, tie activists toone another on the principle of deeply individualized responsibility to thegroup and to social change in general. This individually empowered moderesembles activism characterized as typical of NSMs (Larana, Johnston, andGusfield 1994); the two other kinds of bonds figure much less frequentlyin descriptions of NSMs, and have a longer history in American socialmovements. With a participant-observer's perspective, then, we can retain



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and specify some of the insights of NSM theories, even as we remain at-tuned to their social and historical limits.In all, is participant-observation amongst activists worth the trouble?On scholarly grounds alone, it is very much worth what we can learn aboutthe meaning of movements.

ENDNOTES1. A review of social movement studies based primarily on field research is beyond myintentions here. A very partial list illustrating these studies' range of subject-matter an dstyle would include Lofland (1966), Hall (1978), Tipton (1982), Fantasia (1988), Ginsburg

(1989).2. Th e large, growing literature in the sociology of culture hosts many schools of thought,an d many debates about how to conceptualize culture. For a recent introduction to thevariety of approaches, see Smith (1998).3. For an extensive review and bibliography, see Somers and Gibson (1994).4. Three extensive reviews of these works are available in Larana, Johnston, an d Gusfield(1994), Pichardo (1997), and Tarrow (1988).

REFERENCESAndrews, M . (1991). Lifetimes of Commitment. New York: Cambridge University Press.Anzaldua, G., & Moraga, C. (Eds.). (1982). This Bridge Called My Back Writings of RadicalW om en of Color. New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press.Barkan, S. (1979). Strategic, Tactical and Organizational Dilemmas of the Protest MovementAgainst Nuclear Power. Social Problems,27, 19-37.Becker, H. (1961). Boys in White. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Benford, R. (1993). "You Could be the Hundredth Monkey": Collective Action Frames andVocabularies of Motive Within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement. Sociological Quar-terly, 34, 195-216.Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Boyte, H. (1992). The Pragmatic Ends of Popular Politics. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermasan d the Public Sphere (pp. 340-355). Cambridge: M IT Press.Breines, W . (1982). Community an d Organization in the New Left: 1962-1968. New York:Praeger.Briggs, C. (1986). Learning How to Ask. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Calhoun, C. (1993). Postmodernism as Pseudohistory. Theory, Culture an d Society, 10 , 75-96.Carbaugh, D . (1990). Talking American: Cultural Discourses on Donahue. Albany: SUNY Press.Cohen, J. & Arato, A. (1992). Civil Society an d Political Theory. Cambridge: M IT Press.Eliasoph, N. (1998). Avoiding Politics: H ow Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life. NewYork: Cambridge University Press.Eliasoph, N. (1996). Making a Fragile Public: A Talk-Centered Study of Citizenship andPower. Sociological Theory, 14, 262-289.Eliasoph, N., & Lichterman, P. (1997). The Meaningfulness of Style in Civic Life. Unpblshd.manuscript. Revised version of paper presented at the American Sociological AssociationAnnual Meetings, New York, 1996.

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Mishler, E. (1986). Research Interviewing: Context an d Narrative, Cambridge: Harvard Univer-sity Press.Morris, A. (1984). Th e Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizingfo r Change. New York: Free Press.Morris, A., & Mueller, C. (Eds.) (1992). Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven:Yale University Press.Mouffe, C. (1993). T he Return of the Political.London: Verso.Pichardo, N . (1997). New Social Movements: A Critical Review. Annual Reivew o f Sociology,

23, 411-430.Smith, P. (Ed.) (1998). The New American Cultural Sociology. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress.Somers, M. & Gibson, G. (1994). Reclaiming the Epistemological "Other": Narrative and theSocial Construction of Identity. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Social Theory and the Politics ofIdentity (pp. 37-99). Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.Staggenborg, S. (1988). Th e Consequences of Professionalism and Formalization in the Pro-Choice Movement.American Sociological Review, 53 , 585-605.Stein, A. (1995). Sisters and Queers: The Decentering of Lesbian Feminism. In Darnovsky,M ., Epstein, B., & Flacks, R. (Eds.), Cultural Politics an d Social Movements (pp. 133-153).Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Tarrow, S. (1994). Power in Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Tarrow, S. (1988). National Politics an d Collective Action: Recent Theory an d Research inWestern Europe and the United States. Annual Review of Sociology, 14 , 421-440.Taylor, V., & Whittier, N. (1992). Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Les-bian Feminist Mobilization. In A. Morris and C. Mueller (Eds.), Frontiers in Social Move-ment Theory (pp. 104-129). New Haven: Yale University Press.Tipton, S. (1982). Getting Saved from the Sixties. Berkeley: University of California Press.Vogel, S. (1980). Th e Limits of Protest: A Critique of the Anti-Nuclear Movement. SocialistReview, 54 (Vol. 10, No. 6), 125-134.Wuthnow, R. (1991). Acts o f Compassion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Wuthnow, R., & Witten, M. (1988). New Directions in the Study of Culture. Annual Reviewof Sociology, 14, 49-67.

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Value of Participant Observation