Canadian Journal of Sociology Online September-October 2006
David Croteau, William Hoynes, and Charlotte Ryan, eds.
Rhyming Hope and History: Activists, Academics and SM Scholarship
Series: Social Movements, Protest and Contention
University of Minnesota Press, 2005, 320 pp.
$US 25.00 paper (0-816-46221-X), $US 70.00 hardcover (0-816-46220-1)
What is all the research on social movements for? The contributors to Rhyming Hope and History:
Activists, Academics and Social Movement Scholarship insist that it is and should be to provide
something of value to the social movements and social movement organizations themselves. The
book is directed at why social movement scholarship is not more widely used by social movements.
Its real focus is what academic researchers should do to rectify this.
Rhyming Hope and History is an anthology of sixteen chapters that address the “creative tension
between thinking and action, between theory and practice” (p. xii) within social movement
scholarship. Noting that SM scholarship gained momentum, then legitimacy from 1960s crossfertilization between academia and the often campus-based activism, the text believes that there now
exists a general disconnect between the scholars and the activists, to the general diminishment of
both.
Rhyming Hope and History is primarily a call for academics to be relevant.. It is generally assumed
in the book that academic theory, although ably explaining social movement dynamics, is relatively
“sterile” and that most social movement theorists do not have sufficient connections to movements to
produce strategically useful research. Thus, the book tries to remedy this perceived deficiency by
describing productive involvements by scholars in activist work. Most of the chapters come from or
are influenced by the Media Action and Research Project at Boston College. The chapters are
exclusively American, and often from the Boston area. Only a few chapters highlight the perspective
of activists on how the activist-academic divide could be bridged.
The book begins with a brief exhortation from the editors, then breaks into three parts. The first is
“Activism and Research,” initiated Robert Flacks’ essay on the need for social movement research to
be “relevant” to movements. Croteau’s second chapter is a summary of structural hindrances faced
by academics. His “Which side are you on” channels Howard Becker, but culminates by asking
readers which position they will choose: being an activist, a scholar, or the much more difficult
activist-scholar trying to make an impact in two worlds. Croteau concludes that those taking the last
role must learn to produce two versions of their scholarship, the “popular” version of which will
likely not be valued nor credited by academic institutions.
Other representative chapters in this section include those by Peters, who gives advice from the
perspective of a social movement activist, and Healey and Hinson, on reframing academic theory for
workshops with social movement participants. Peters points out how important it is that academics
not replicate class-based privilege, insisting that scholars also expect to participate in movement
building (“shitwork”, p. 53) besides engaging in ideas, and share resources (such as access to quality
libraries).
The second section, “Bridging the Divide: Lessons from the Field”, recounts efforts by academics to
help social movement organizations. A sample of the chapters: Charlotte Ryan provides an account
of facilitating a domestic violence organization’s ability to communicate with the public through the
media; Ferree, Sperling and Risman tell of working with a Russian woman’s collective, which
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Croteau et al., Rhyming Hope & History - 2
highlighted the futility of applying theory from the outside. Ross describes how anti-sweatshop
activists did not listen to much of his research or his decades of activist experience.
The third section provides “Implications for Theory and Scholarship”, and is perhaps the most useful
in showing the utility of theory and scholarly analysis for social movements. David Meyer
speculates on “Scholarship that Might Matter,” with excellent suggestions that culminate in the
recommendation for research on the foremost concerns of activists, especially effective strategy.
Goodson tries to elaborate on black feminist epistemology in use. Snow and Corrigal-Brown
synthesize framing research with actual failures of movement framing to offer advice on more
effective movement messages.
Finally, Taylor and Rupp’s account of participatory research with increasingly politicized drag
queens was among the most lively chapters, although I believe it is better suited for the second
section. I intend to use this chapter for a research methods class as their “researcher tale” engagingly
demonstrates the interpretative research process and foregrounds decisions about researcher stance.
At a university with a student body socialized in the conservative climate of Alberta, and given the
predominant “fact” versus “value” characterization of the scientific enterprise’s objectivity, I
anticipate good discussion, made more accessible by well-drawn characters and setting. I did feel
Taylor and Rupp made a great deal more of their research roles, yet any scholar familiar with
participant-observation (heavy on the participation) would not see them as crossing many
boundaries. I realize, however, that this may be my orientation as a person immersed first in social
movements, who came to academia specifically to improve such social change efforts.
This highlights that how a reader takes this book will likely depend on her or his existing beliefs on
the public “relevance” of scholarship. Social movement scholarship, perhaps more than most
subdisciplines in the social sciences, seems to have an assumption that researchers themselves be
engaged in presenting scholarship in its practical guises. Moreover, social movement scholarship is
regrettably focused on “progressive” social movements, and this book is no different. The question
of activist-academic linkages would most certainly be more rousingly debated if there were cases
where researchers do not share the social movement organization’s social and political sentiments.
William Gamson’s “Afterword” returns to the main theme of the book by providing an
autobiography of the relevance of his career in the field. Like the rest of the contributors to this text
Gamson brings a highly storied writing style to the fundamental assumption of the book. For the
contributors to this volume, there is no doubt that social movement research should be useful to
social movement organizations.
The text is the twenty-fourth volume in the Social Movements, Protest and Contention series. It adds
to that social movement literature, but even more so to the existing debates over the role(s) of the
social sciences in the public sphere. There has been considerable recent ferment over “public
sociology” in the United States (see Burawoy, 2004). Europe’s sociologists have had an altogether
different perspective on the public intellectual or sociological engagement in the polis, and some
European scholars would have been appreciated in this text. These debates have had little spillover
effect yet in Canada; my perception is that policy sociology is our most prominent position, but this
might be a useful discussion for the CSA-associated Canadian Network for the Study of Identities,
Mobilization, and Conflict to bring forward.
References
Burawoy, Michael. 2004. Public sociologies: Contradictions, dilemmas, and possibilities. Social Forces, 82
(4), 1603-1618.
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Randolph Haluza-DeLay
The King’s University College
randy.haluza_delay@kingsu.ca
Randolph Haluza-DeLay is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at The King’s University College in
Edmonton Alberta. His research focuses on environmental sociology — especially environmental justice and
church-based environmentalism — and anti-racism, with a special interest in academic-community
collaboration.
http://www.cjsonline.ca/reviews/rhyminghope.html
September 2006
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