Protest, politics and produce: a resource account of anti-genetically modified organism activism

Abstract

Activism research is over-reliant on social psychological frameworks emphasising framing or ideological-based explanations. The current underdevelopment of resource-based accounts requires urgent attention from social movement scholars. Stressing the rationality of social movement actors, resource mobilisation theory is used to assess and understand the empirical validity of resource-driven social mobilisation. Anti-genetically modified organism (GMO) activism in France is selected as a uniquely ripe context for exploring resource mobilisation. A resource-based examination reveals why, when and how key anti-GMO movement actors differentiated their strategies on the basis of protest, politics and produce. A new framework is proposed to encompass key variables around material, human and network-based resources. It is argued that resource mobilisation research designs need to move beyond financially driven causal arguments.

Keywords:

• resource mobilisation
• social movements
• environmental movements
• action repertoires
• activism
• genetically modified organisms

Notes

1. Data on new social media usage (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) were excluded due to word limitations.

2. The eight topic areas are presented with their relevant number of published documents: “perception of GMOs (15), GMOs and world hunger (26), GMOs and patents (10), GMOs and regulations (16), GMOs and the economy (6), GMOs and the environment (19), GMOs and France (30) and GMOs in general (6)”.

3. CP sporadically updates its “GMO campaign” section on its website. It has focused more on the publication of policy documents (most recent available online) and books.

4. Interview with an anonymous Greenpeace-France representative, GMO officer 2008–2011.