{"id":69149,"date":"2017-01-06T17:47:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T22:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=69149"},"modified":"2017-01-06T19:26:23","modified_gmt":"2017-01-07T00:26:23","slug":"is-mass-murder-now-part-of-the-repertoire-of-contention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2017\/01\/06\/is-mass-murder-now-part-of-the-repertoire-of-contention\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Mass Murder Now Part of the Repertoire of Contention?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there’s one thing Americans can agree upon, it might be that people shouldn’t\u00a0be indiscriminately firing guns crowds, no matter how angry they are. The shooting in the Ft. Lauderdale airport is just the latest example. Mass shootings are on the rise<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0I’m fearful that what we are seeing isn’t just an increase in violence, but the rise of a new\u00a0habit, a behavior that is widely recognized as a way to express\u00a0an objection to the way things are.<\/p>\n

To register an objection to something about the world, a person or group\u00a0needs to engage in an action that other people<\/em> recognize as\u00a0a form of protest. We know, in\u00a0other words, what protest looks like. It’s a strike, a rally, a march, a sit-in, a boycott. These are all recognizable ways in which individuals and groups can stake a political claim, whereas other group activities — a picnic, a group bike ride, singing together\u00a0— are not obviously so. To describe this set of protest-related tools, the sociologist Charles Tilly coined\u00a0the phrase “repertoire of contention.” Activists have a stock of actions to draw from when they want to make a statement that others will understand.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0culture’s repertoire of contention is in constant evolution. Each tool has to be invented and conceptually linked to the idea of protest before it can\u00a0play\u00a0this role. The sit-in, for example, was invented during the early civil rights movement. When African American activists and their allies occupied white-only restaurants, bringing lunch counters to a halt to bring attention to the\u00a0exclusion of\u00a0black people, they introduced a new way of registering an objection to the status quo, one that almost anyone would recognize today.<\/p>\n

New ways of protesting\u00a0are being invented every day: the hashtag, the hacktivist, and shutting down freeways are some newer ones. Some become part of the repertoire. Consider the image<\/a> below by sociologist Michael Biggs<\/a>, which shows how suicide as a form of protest “caught on” \u00a0in the 1960s:<\/p>\n

\"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u00a0am afraid that mass murder has become part of the repertoire of contention. This is theoretically tricky \u2013 others have fought over what really counts as a social movement action \u2013 but it does seem quite clear that mass murder with a gun is a more familiar<\/em> and\u00a0more easily conceptualized<\/em> way of expressing one’s discontent and then it was, say, pre-Columbine. If a\u00a0person is outraged by some state of affairs, mass killing is a readily\u00a0available way to\u00a0express that outrage both technically (thanks to\u00a0gun regulation) and cognitively (because it is now part of the recognized repertoire).<\/p>\n

Dylann Roof\u00a0wanted to\u00a0register his discontent with the place of black people in American society, Robert Lewis Dear stormed a Planned Parenthood with a pro-choice message, Elliot Rodgers was angry about women’s freedom to reject him, Omar Matteen killed dozens\u00a0to express his (internalized) disgust for homosexuality, Gavin Long communicated his sense of rage and helplessness in the face of black death\u00a0by killing police. At some point each thought, “What can I do to make a difference?” And mass murder came to mind.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of such events,\u00a0the news media routine contributes to the idea that mass murder is a form of protest by searching for an explanation above and beyond the desire to kill. That explanation often positions the rationale for the murder\u00a0within the realm of politics, whether we call it terrorism, resistance, or prejudice. This further sends the message that mass murder is political,<\/em> part of the American repertoire of contention.<\/p>\n

The terrifying part is that once protest tools become part of the repertoire, they are diffused across movements and throughout society. It’s no longer just\u00a0civil rights activists who use the\u00a0sit-in; any and all activists do. Perhaps that’s why we see such a range of motivations among these mass murderers. It\u00a0has become\u00a0an obvious way to express an objection\u00a0that the discontented can be sure others will understand.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there’s one thing Americans can agree upon, it might be that people shouldn’t\u00a0be indiscriminately firing guns crowds, no matter how angry they are. The shooting in the Ft. Lauderdale airport is just the latest example. Mass shootings are on the rise\u00a0and\u00a0I’m fearful that what we are seeing isn’t just an increase in violence, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":69155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12508,15,85,250,133],"class_list":["post-69149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-activismsocial-movements","tag-culture","tag-politics","tag-guns","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/07\/4-6.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69149"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69680,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69149\/revisions\/69680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}