Direct Action, Deliberation, and Diffusion

This book explores why new social movement tactics spread to some places and not others.

Why do new social movement tactics spread to some places and not others? Wood argues that inequalities rooted in political history, political economy and local interactions can make social movements more or less able to evaluate and incorporate new tactics.What are the micro-level interactions and conversations that underlie successful and failed diffusion? By comparing the spread of direct action tactics from the 1999 Global Justice Movement protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle to grassroots activists in Toronto and New York, Lesley Wood argues that dynamics of deliberation among local activists both aided and blocked diffusion. To analyze the localization of this cycle of protest, the research brings together rich ethnography, interviews, social network analysis and catalogs of protest events. The findings suggest that when diverse activists with different perspectives can discuss innovations in a reflexive, egalitarian manner, they are more likely to make strategic and meaningful choices.