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ES 375: Ecosocial Activism
DIMENSIONS IN THE ANALYSIS OF CASE STUDIES
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Once you start looking at the complexity of any significant case study, you realize how many different and different kinds of dimensions there are, and how many questions there are to ask. Below is a lengthy list of dimensions and questions – far more than you will be able to incorporate into your study. I list them so you can get a better sense of the complexity of analyzing case studies, and so you can choose which dimensions and questions you want to focus on in your paper.
DIMENSIONS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER IN YOUR ANALYSIS
Basic context
- What condition were the activists reacting against?
- What kind of organization did the activists have?
- What kinds of power did they have and what kinds did they lack? Did that change over time?
- What were the views of the general public toward the issues?
- What was the previous history of the issues and of the groups involved?
- What were the general historical conditions and trends at the time of the activism?
The Problem
- What were the problems, and which ones were primary and secondary?
- How bad was the problem?
- What were the differences among individuals and groups concerning the problem?
- What individual, groups, structures, and forces caused the problems?
Values and worldview
- What was the basic worldview (or worldviews) of the activist group(s)?
- What were their basic values?
- Which ones were primary, which secondary?
- What common ones were missing or slighted?
- What was their basic social philosophy?
- What was their basic environmental philosophy?
- What was the role of morality in their activism?
- Why did they hold these values?
- Did these values change over time?
Strategies, goals, and tactics
- What were their short-term goals? What were their longer term goals? Were there differences of opinion about these goals?
- What general strategies were used, and why?
- What tactics were used, why, and how were they used?
- How were these goals, strategies, and tactics decided upon – what was the process and who had the power?
- Did the strategies and tactics change over time?
Impact and relative success
- What were the results of the action: on the particular condition they were responding to? on different social groups? on the environment? on the political/social structures?
- Which tactics worked, and why? Which tactics did not work, and why?
- What were the personal, social, and environmental costs, and why did they occur? Could they have been avoided or ameliorated?
- Was the activism a success? In what way and how much? In what way and how much was it unsuccessful? Are their different assessments of success by different people and groups? Do you think it was successful? What are the criteria for success, for the people/groups involved in activism and for you?
- What could/should they have done differently?
Lessons : what can we learn from this?
- In terms of doing this type of activism
- In terms of other types of activism
- In terms of being involved in a small activist group
OTHER DIMENSIONS THAT WOULD BE PART OF A MORE THOROUGH ANALYSIS
The social groups
- What are the different social groups involved, both among activists and their opponents?
- What types and degrees of power do they have? Why do they have that power?
- What are the relationships among the different groups?
- What are the values and attitudes of the different groups?
- Do any of these change as time goes on?
Social structures
- What are the economic, political, and social structures and power relations impacting the situation?
- In what way do they impact the situation?
- Does the activism change or attempt to change those structures, and if so how?
- For example, capitalism, private property, corporate personhood, labor/environmental legislation, law enforcement (and who influences them), courts (and who influences them), “company town,” rights of immigrants, etc.
Ideologies
- What were the economic, political, and social ideologies impacting the situation?
- Did different social groups have different ideologies?
- Did the activism change or attempt to change those ideologies, and if so how?
- For example, the value of private property versus value of social justice, people as atomized individuals or people as members of a community, conception and value of different social groups (e.g., ethnicity, gender).
Attitudes
- What was the attitude toward their opponent(s)? Why?
- What was the attitude toward success? Why?
- What was their attitude toward power? Why?
- Are there differences among the activists concerning these?
- Do these change over time?
Dimensions: In their activism, what was the role of
- economic analysis
- gender analysis
- social psychology
- social history, including the history of progressive movements
- environmental history
- morality
- spirituality
Relation (if any) to activist traditions
- How were their values, approach, analysis, goals, and tactics related to traditions such as anarchism and social ecology, socialism and socialist ecology, feminism and ecofeminism, deep ecology, bioregionalism, pacifism, liberation theology, anti-globalization, radical democracy, populist agrarianism?
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