| Chapter : | Introduction |
Although SIU focuses on generating a movement about climate change, our analysis speaks to the broader effort to spark political action. As we chronicle and analyze SIU as an exemplar of how one contemporary campaign emerged out of and interacted with today's political and economic pastiche, we aim to offer academically rigorous yet accessible advice to activists, movement builders, and citizens interested in constructing future social movements. For this reason, each chapter concludes with concrete suggestions for people engaged in advocacy and movement building. The next section sketches the three theoretical threads that characterize movement building: rhetorical strategies, modes of organizing, and practices of citizenship. Finally, we preview the essays in this book by discussing how they relate to these threads.
Research Approach
Shortly after McKibben announced the SIU campaign on Grist, we initiated a collaborative national research project on SIU. As local organizers were developing their actions, we were planning how to best study SIU. Mirroring the attempt to start a movement through coordinated local actions, we sought out researchers across the country to attend and observe local SIU actions. In the end, we had eight research teams examine seventeen local actions in California, Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Washington state.
Through several conference calls, research teams across the country developed a common approach to studying local actions. Members of the research teams would attend local actions, take field notes of their observations, record speeches, take photographs, and conduct interviews with people at the events. The interviews included several shared questions 1 across the sites, and individual research teams were encouraged to ask additional questions based on their research interests. Several teams gathered additional information, such as collecting paper handouts from informational booths or conducting brief surveys. In addition to gathering materials from local actions, we examined the national Web site, making electronic caches of the site, including the organizer discussion