The Legacies of the Civil Rights Movement and the Paradoxical Politics of Inclusion: Collective Memory in Contentious Politics
General Material Designation
[Thesis]
First Statement of Responsibility
Hajar Yazdiha
Subsequent Statement of Responsibility
Kurzman, Charles
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
2017
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
220
GENERAL NOTES
Text of Note
Committee members: Andrews, Kenneth; Bail, Christopher; Caren, Neal; Perrin, Andrew
NOTES PERTAINING TO PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC.
Text of Note
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-369-87537-9
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree
Ph.D.
Discipline of degree
Sociology
Body granting the degree
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Text preceding or following the note
2017
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
This dissertation examines the political uses of the collective memory of the Civil Rights Movement. In Chapter 1, I sketch the making of the collective memory of the Civil Rights Movement, as a cultural structure that is taken up and deployed by all sorts of political actors. In Chapter 2, I engage in an analysis of the political uses of the Civil Rights Movement among 110 social movement organizations representing 11 different social movements from 1980-2016. I find that as different groups make strategic linkages between their group's identity and the collective memory of the Civil Rights Movement, the interaction between identity and memory produces new sets of meanings, transforming the meaning of the collective memory. Chapter 3 examines the processes of "strategy in interaction" more closely analyzing archival data from two paired-cases of rival movements over two presidential eras, the LGBT Movement and Family Values coalitions and the Immigrant Rights Movement and Nativist coalitions. I identify a pattern of processes that elucidate how the perceived relationship between a group's identity and a collective memory shapes the construction and contestation of cultural resonance. Chapter 4 examines the growing Muslim Rights Movement as a group whose social location explicitly shifts after 9/11. Drawing on archival data and focus groups with Muslim community leaders and organizers, this chapter shows that Muslim activists' perceptions of group identity recalibrate with changing political-cultural contexts, reshaping strategies for seeking inclusion. These identity shifts reflect a process of racialization of collective identity in which post-9/11 policies and discourses stigmatize Muslims, shaping contexts in which Muslims generate perceptions of social location analogous to African Americans. What results is a new strategic focus on coalition-building with people of color through strategies aimed at establishing common oppression. Through this volume, by examining how a single cultural structure is taken up by a landscape of social movements, I develop a new approach to understanding cultural processes in contentious politics. As groups strategically deploy collective memory in different ways, the proliferation of meanings of memory, over time, changes the collective memory itself and the way we collectively recall our shared history.
TOPICAL NAME USED AS SUBJECT
American studies; Social research
UNCONTROLLED SUBJECT TERMS
Subject Term
Social sciences;Civil rights;Collective identity;Collective memory;Culture;Race;Social movements