- Email: [email protected]
Human service siting conflicts as social movements
Geoforum 94 (2018) 107–109
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
Critical review
Human service siting conflicts as social movements a,⁎
T
Åsa Westermark , Klas Borell b
a b
Department of Social Work, Jönköping University, 551 11 Jönköping, Sweden School of Education and Communication, Jönköping University, 551 11 Jönköping, Sweden
A R T I C LE I N FO
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Social movements Framing NIMBY Social services
It is deeply ironic that the social movement perspective has so far scarcely been utilised to analyse local protests against establishments of human service enterprises, as the perspective was originally formulated in just such a context. The social movement approach could inject new vitality into a field of research that has become increasingly marginalised and enable human geographers and other social scientists to reconnect to the key issues of socio-spatial exclusion that were raised 30–40 years ago, but now with theoretically informed perspectives. At the same time, social movement research has much to gain from returning to the study of protest movements opposing the establishment of human service enterprises: they are local and thus typical of most social movements, and their success or failure, which lacks the ambiguity so often noted in social movement research, can be studied from a lifecycle perspective.
1. Introduction Disputes of land use is a commonly treated topic in geography. However, research into conflicts over locally unwanted land use has shifted focus. Interest during the first wave of such research in the 1980s and 1990s focussed on reactions to land use for human services, such as psychiatric care or addiction rehabilitation (e.g., Dear and Taylor, 1982). Current research is dominated by attention to protests against the establishment of environmentally hazardous enterprises. This research has, as DeVerteuil (2013) summarised it, “gone environmental”. The theoretical perspectives have also been re-examined as the focus of study has changed. The acronym NIMBY (not in my back yard) was a key term in studies of controversial land use during the first wave. NIMBY is not applicable to just any local land use conflict; rather, the term pertains to a specific type of conflict in which the protests target not the nature of the planned enterprise, but only its siting in one’s own neighbourhood (Dear, 1992). However, in practice this specificity was lost during the first wave of research into land use conflicts. Rather than designating a specific type of neighbourhood protest, NIMBY became a descriptor collectively applied to all types of land use conflicts (Borell and Westermark, 2018). This is a key issue in the extensive criticism levelled at the first-wave studies of local land use conflicts, i.e., labelling all conflicts as NIMBY cases underestimates their diversity and complexity (Futrell, 2003; Wolsink, 2006). The lack of contextualisation of local conflicts was a direct result of the emphasis on general attitudes characteristic of the first-wave of studies: it was not mainly local ⁎
conflicts over land use that were studied, but rather the general attitudes thought to underlie such conflicts. In surveys, hypothetical questions were posed regarding people’s attitudes towards having different groups of clients as neighbours, and on that basis these groups were then ranked from acceptable (medical care clients) to unacceptable (clients with ‘social disorders’ such as criminality and alcoholism). In short, the degree of general stigmatisation gave rise to a ‘good neighbour hierarchy’ (Dear, 1992), viewed as predictive of local land use conflicts. NIMBY attitudes were thus considered to be relatively stable, latent attitudes that become manifest when stigmatised groups are offered local care, treatment, or services (Futrell, 2003). In current research into protests against the establishment of environmentally hazardous enterprises, an emphasis on general attitudes is often replaced by a focus on the actors and their meaning-making that typifies social movement research. Social movement research, then, is characterised by an emphasis on actors’ framing, and on the frames responded to the composite and mutable challenges with which social movements have to cope. Frames, which concern how movements interpret given complexes of problems, identify solutions, and formulate paths of action, play a key role in the mobilization of movements, and in the external acceptance they can achieve. To maximise their ability to act, movements must develop frames that enable them to neutralise opponents and win over allies (Snow and Benford, 1988). The ability of local environmental protesters to develop their frames determines their success. Like other protests against unwanted land use, local environmental protests typically encounter objections that they
Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (K. Borell).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.05.017 Received 14 November 2017; Received in revised form 25 April 2018; Accepted 14 May 2018 Available online 26 May 2018 0016-7185/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Geoforum 94 (2018) 107–109
Å. Westermark, K. Borell
The impossibility of developing legitimate principle-based criticism of the establishment of a human service enterprise means that, unlike local protests against environmentally harmful enterprises, such local protest movements cannot connect to national movements or agendas. To the limited extent that such options are available, they represent threats rather than opportunities. In today’s Europe, right-wing extremists are attempting to make connections to local protests against the establishment of centres for asylum seekers. However, the local protest movements do not view such overtures as an opportunity to propel a local issue in a more general direction, but rather as a serious threat to their own legitimacy. Representatives of local protest groups counter accusations that they have ties to right-wing extremist groups, warn their own adherents against expressing themselves in any way that could indicate the existence of such ties, and stress the strictly local nature of their movements (e.g., Hubbard, 2005). Even as the emphasis on local motives (e.g., that the planned enterprise would threaten green areas or overstress local infrastructure) makes it possible for local protest groups to avoid directly discussing the enterprises and their clients – ‘the elephant in the room’ – it is also a vulnerable strategy. Siting conflicts can be viewed as ‘frame contests’ primarily between protesting local inhabitants and decision-makers. When the motives of protesting local inhabitants are described as ‘egoistical’, these inhabitants face the task of developing morally and politically resonant frames. One example of how protest frames can be modified in such a situation and find new expressions is the argument that opposition to the establishment of an intended human service enterprise does not have to do with the problems it would cause the local inhabitants, but rather the problems it would cause its intended clients. For example, in Hubbard’s (2005) study of the placement of a refugee camp, representatives of the opposition to the camp stressed that it would not only overstress the infrastructure of a small community but also have negative consequences for the asylum seekers themselves, as the local community was simply too small and isolated to meet the social needs of the refugees. Rather than questioning the need for the camp, or its clients, the opposition to its establishment characterised itself as being in the interests of both the local community and the refugees. Justice framing offers a more radical means of avoiding discussion of the nature of the enterprise or its clients. On one hand, protesting neighbours can cite deficiencies in procedural justice (Manaster, 1995), i.e., deficiencies in the process by which a decision was reached, including the right of participation and access to information and, on the other hand, cite deficiencies in distributive justice, i.e., comparative questions concerning the extent to which different areas are ‘burdened’ by such enterprises. This latter type of frames appears to be common about local protests against the establishment of centres for asylum seekers in Europe. Such rhetoric draws discursive support from the fact that a corresponding discussion of the distribution of refugees is currently being conducted on various geographical scales, i.e., among the member states of the European Union (Carlsen, 2016) and among European governments, regions, and municipalities (Hinger et al., 2016). By citing a justice frame, actors not only avoid questions about the enterprise and its clients but can also gain access to a more resonant frame that ties into widely held general values of democracy, sustainability, and solidarity.
represent a selfish defence of the local community without respect for the greater public interest. Several studies demonstrate that government agencies and corporate actors attempt to discredit local protests as ‘just NIMBY protests’ (e.g., Gibson, 2005; McClymont and O’Hare, 2008). Local environmental protests often develop their frames in a more universalistic direction to neutralise such attacks. These protests can do this in various ways: they can develop their frames so that they are clearly associated with hegemonic discourses (e.g., climate change), they can form coalitions with other local protest groups, and they can create various connections to national or even international environmental organisations (Rootes, 2013). In addition, local environmental protests have increasingly been able to cite a general discourse on social justice in connection with the siting of environmentally harmful enterprises, i.e., a generally held notion of preventing certain population groups from having to bear disproportionate burdens in terms of pollutants, environmental toxins, or other environmental risks (McGurty, 1997). Local environmental conflicts leave room for movements to demonstrate that their defence of the local community is at the same time a defence of the public interest. By developing their frames and connecting to regional, national, or international agendas, local protest movements can escape the limitations of the local context and successfully claim that their protests are not about ‘their own back yard’, but about everyone’s back yard. Local protests against human service sites generally lack such potential for generalisation. Neighbours who protest against, say, the siting of a homeless shelter cannot, in contrast to local inhabitants protesting against a nuclear power plant, hope to characterise their protests as based on ‘principle.’ Nevertheless, we assert here that the framing perspective can enrich research into local protests against human services and help restore to this area of research some of the importance it had towards the end of the last century. However, the focus will be different: If the study of protests against environmentally harmful land use largely concerns the ways in which local movements can step outside their local context, then the study of protests against the siting of human services must, we believe, be based on their being referred to a local rhetoric and instead face the challenge of finding effective forms for making such references. It is our intention in this paper not only to illustrate how the framing perspective can enrich the currently neglected study of local movements against land use for human service enterprises. It is also to identify how research into social movements and the development of the framing perspective can benefit from the inclusion of a new empirical field. 2. Data in search of theory Social movements do not operate in a vacuum. To access public support and be able to argue against decision-makers, they must adapt to the values and rules prevailing in their institutional surroundings and develop frames that correspond to widely held perceptions. In the case of local movements against land use for human services, this entails significant limits on their actions. To be successful in their ‘defence of the neighbourhood’ they cannot openly criticise such services per se or the clients to whom they would provide care, services, or treatment. Such enterprises enjoy broad support in terms of public opinion, and stigmatising characterisations of the clients of such service is made difficult or prevented purely by what Billig (1998) referred to as the ‘norm against prejudice’. In its original meaning, the term NIMBY had, in this context, clear analytic value, as it summarises the dilemma facing local protest movements against land use for human services. Because local protest groups cannot criticise such enterprises or their clients in principle, they are called upon to construct frames addressing the reasons for opposing a specific instance of such land use. In the absence of the possibility of developing a principle-based rhetoric, such movements must refer to a local rhetoric (Gordon and Jasper, 1996).
3. Theory in search of data Plans to establish potentially controversial human services can give rise to various local reactions. The first is non-reaction, i.e., the local inhabitants exhibit no visible reaction. The second type of reaction, expressions of concern, has to do with reactions at the individual level, for example, telephone calls to decision-makers or critical statements in mass media interviews. Speaking of social movements does not become relevant until the third type of reaction, local protests, is present. Neighbours organise into ad hoc organisations or use existing 108
Geoforum 94 (2018) 107–109
Å. Westermark, K. Borell
teaching about Goffman’s sociology at the University of Texas, and it was when the discussions homed in on Goffman’s book Frame Analysis (1974) that he began to perceive the possibilities for cross-pollination (Snow, 2014: 27–28). Social movement research, often from a framing perspective, has since become one of the fastest growing fields in sociology, although this research has had little association with the issues raised during the perspective’s formative years. However, as we have noted here, social movement research has much to gain from returning to the study of protest movements opposing the establishment of human service enterprises: they are local and thus typical of most social movements, and their success or failure, which lacks the ambiguity so often noted in social movement research, can be studied from a lifecycle perspective because such movements are often active only within brief windows of opportunity. Equally important, the framing perspective could inject new vitality to the increasingly marginalized geographical study of reactions to land use for human services and enable geographers to reconnect to the key issues of socio-spatial exclusion that were raised 30–40 years ago, but now with theoretically informed perspectives.
organisations and networks in order to, for example, express their displeasure with the planned establishment of an enterprise by collecting names and holding meetings, i.e., they take action that requires coordination and reach agreement on their common goals and means. We believe that the study of such social movements is of significant potential interest in social movement research, as these movements offer access to the empirical data needed for more comprehensive theory development. Three circumstances merit emphasis: First, growing research into social movements is characterised by an obvious skew, being dominated by movements that are national rather than local in scope. However, this does not reflect the factual circumstances. The overwhelming majority of social movements in the Western world are local, and the indications are that they are apparently increasingly so (McAdam et al., 2005). Studying protest movements opposed to the establishment of controversial human services puts the focus on nearly ideal-typical local movements. Second, the study of local protest movements opposing human service location offers access to the lifecycle perspective that is often missing in social movement research. Research into social movements and the frames they utilise is, as Benford (1997) noted, often static: it dips at random into what is a process in which frames are gradually constructed and reconstructed. In contrast to many national organisations, local protest movements opposing human service sites have extremely finite life spans. They exist only for as long as there are windows of opportunity, i.e., a placement issue can, given the legal limitations that pertain, only be influenced for a limited time. Frames are formulated and modified over weeks and months rather than years and decades. Third, the study of local movements protesting controversial human service siting offers a unique opportunity to study success among movements. Estimating the success of social movements is notoriously problematic. Questions about whether, for example, social movements such as peace or trade union movements have been successful invite answers that, while radically divergent, are all highly reasonable (Walsh et al., 1993). In contrast to national movements, with their broad and often changeable agendas, the success criteria for local movements protesting human service sites are often crystal clear: Did they succeed or fail in preventing the establishment of an unwanted enterprise? Against this background, it becomes possible to study, systematically and comparatively, both the importance that the framing of such movements can have and the importance of mobilization, opposing forces, and local power relationships.
References Billig, M., 1998. The notion of ‘prejudice’: some rhetorical and ideological aspects. Text Talk 8, 91–110. Benford, R.D., 1997. An insider’s critique of the social movement framing perspective. Sociol. Inquiry 67, 409–430. Borell, K., Westermark, Å., 2018. Siting of human services facility and the not in my back yard phenomenon: a critical research review. Commun. Develop. J. 53, 246–262. Carlsen, L., 2016. An alternative view on distribution keys for the possible relocation of refugees in the European Union. Soc. Indic. Res. 130, 1147–1163. Dear, M.J., 1992. Understanding and overcoming the NIMBY syndrome. J. Am. Plan. Assoc. 58, 288–300. Dear, M.J., Taylor, S.M., 1982. Not on Our Street: Community Attitudes to Mental Care. Pion, London. DeVerteuil, G., 2013. Where has NIMBY gone in urban geography? Soc. Cult. Geogr. 14, 599–603. Futrell, R., 2003. Framing processes, cognitive liberation, and NIMBY protest in the U.S. chemical-weapons disposal conflicts. Sociol. Inquiry 73, 359–386. Gibson, T.A., 2005. NIMBY and the civic good. City Commun. 4, 381–401. Gordon, C., Jasper, J.M., 1996. Overcoming the Nimby label: rhetorical and organizational links for local protestors. Res. Soc. Movem. Conflicts Change 19, 159–181. Goffman, E., 1974. Frame Analysis. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Hinger, S., Schäfer, P., Pott, A., 2016. The local production of asylum. J. Refugee Stud. 29, 440–463. Hubbard, P., 2005. Accommodating otherness: anti-asylum centre protest and the maintenance of white privilege. Trans. Inst. Brit. Geogr. 30, 52–65. Manaster, K., 1995. Social Justice Reconsidered: The Problem of Appropriate Precision in a Theory of Justice. University of Illinois Press, Chicago. McClymont, K., O’Hare, P., 2008. ‘We’re not NIMBYs!’ Contrasting local protest groups with idealized conceptions of sustainable communities. Local Environ. 321–355. McAdam, D., Sampson, R.J., Weffer, S., MacIndre, H., 2005. ‘There will be fighting in the streets’: the distorting lens of social movement studies. Mobilization 10, 1–18. McGurty, E.M., 1997. From NIMBY to civil rights: the origins of the environmental justice movement. Environ. Hist. 2, 301–323. Rootes, C., 2013. From local conflict to national issue: when and how environmental campaigns succeed in transcending the local. Environ. Polit. 22, 95–114. Snow, D.A., 2014. Research-biographic foundations of the 1986 frame alignment article. Mobilization 19, 23–45. Snow, D.A., Anderson, L., 1993. Down on Their Luck. A Study of Homeless Street People. University of California Press, Berkley, CA. Snow, D.A., Benford, R.D., 1988. Ideology, frame resonance, and participant mobilization. Int. Soc. Movem. Res. 1, 197–217. Walsh, E., Warland, R., Smith, D.C., 1993. Backyards, NIMBYs, and incinerator sitings: implications for social movement theory. Soc. Probl. 40, 25–38. Wolsink, M., 2006. Invalid theory impedes our understanding: a critique on the persistence of the language of NIMBY. Trans. Inst. Brit. Geogr. 31, 85–91.
4. Conclusion It is ironic that the framing perspective has so far scarcely been utilised to analyse local protests against establishments of human service enterprises, as the perspective was originally formulated in just such a context. David Snow, who was mainly responsible for inspiring the framing perspective, was studying the homelessness problem in Austin, Texas, including the neighbourhood protests that arose when the Salvation Army shelter was seeking a new location (Snow and Anderson, 1993). The protesting neighbours faced a complicated rhetorical task, i.e., how to argue that the facility should not be sited in ‘their own back yard’ without criticising the generally respected social work done by the Salvation Army. As this was playing out, Snow was
109
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
Critical review
Human service siting conflicts as social movements a,⁎
T
Åsa Westermark , Klas Borell b
a b
Department of Social Work, Jönköping University, 551 11 Jönköping, Sweden School of Education and Communication, Jönköping University, 551 11 Jönköping, Sweden
A R T I C LE I N FO
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Social movements Framing NIMBY Social services
It is deeply ironic that the social movement perspective has so far scarcely been utilised to analyse local protests against establishments of human service enterprises, as the perspective was originally formulated in just such a context. The social movement approach could inject new vitality into a field of research that has become increasingly marginalised and enable human geographers and other social scientists to reconnect to the key issues of socio-spatial exclusion that were raised 30–40 years ago, but now with theoretically informed perspectives. At the same time, social movement research has much to gain from returning to the study of protest movements opposing the establishment of human service enterprises: they are local and thus typical of most social movements, and their success or failure, which lacks the ambiguity so often noted in social movement research, can be studied from a lifecycle perspective.
1. Introduction Disputes of land use is a commonly treated topic in geography. However, research into conflicts over locally unwanted land use has shifted focus. Interest during the first wave of such research in the 1980s and 1990s focussed on reactions to land use for human services, such as psychiatric care or addiction rehabilitation (e.g., Dear and Taylor, 1982). Current research is dominated by attention to protests against the establishment of environmentally hazardous enterprises. This research has, as DeVerteuil (2013) summarised it, “gone environmental”. The theoretical perspectives have also been re-examined as the focus of study has changed. The acronym NIMBY (not in my back yard) was a key term in studies of controversial land use during the first wave. NIMBY is not applicable to just any local land use conflict; rather, the term pertains to a specific type of conflict in which the protests target not the nature of the planned enterprise, but only its siting in one’s own neighbourhood (Dear, 1992). However, in practice this specificity was lost during the first wave of research into land use conflicts. Rather than designating a specific type of neighbourhood protest, NIMBY became a descriptor collectively applied to all types of land use conflicts (Borell and Westermark, 2018). This is a key issue in the extensive criticism levelled at the first-wave studies of local land use conflicts, i.e., labelling all conflicts as NIMBY cases underestimates their diversity and complexity (Futrell, 2003; Wolsink, 2006). The lack of contextualisation of local conflicts was a direct result of the emphasis on general attitudes characteristic of the first-wave of studies: it was not mainly local ⁎
conflicts over land use that were studied, but rather the general attitudes thought to underlie such conflicts. In surveys, hypothetical questions were posed regarding people’s attitudes towards having different groups of clients as neighbours, and on that basis these groups were then ranked from acceptable (medical care clients) to unacceptable (clients with ‘social disorders’ such as criminality and alcoholism). In short, the degree of general stigmatisation gave rise to a ‘good neighbour hierarchy’ (Dear, 1992), viewed as predictive of local land use conflicts. NIMBY attitudes were thus considered to be relatively stable, latent attitudes that become manifest when stigmatised groups are offered local care, treatment, or services (Futrell, 2003). In current research into protests against the establishment of environmentally hazardous enterprises, an emphasis on general attitudes is often replaced by a focus on the actors and their meaning-making that typifies social movement research. Social movement research, then, is characterised by an emphasis on actors’ framing, and on the frames responded to the composite and mutable challenges with which social movements have to cope. Frames, which concern how movements interpret given complexes of problems, identify solutions, and formulate paths of action, play a key role in the mobilization of movements, and in the external acceptance they can achieve. To maximise their ability to act, movements must develop frames that enable them to neutralise opponents and win over allies (Snow and Benford, 1988). The ability of local environmental protesters to develop their frames determines their success. Like other protests against unwanted land use, local environmental protests typically encounter objections that they
Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (K. Borell).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.05.017 Received 14 November 2017; Received in revised form 25 April 2018; Accepted 14 May 2018 Available online 26 May 2018 0016-7185/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Geoforum 94 (2018) 107–109
Å. Westermark, K. Borell
The impossibility of developing legitimate principle-based criticism of the establishment of a human service enterprise means that, unlike local protests against environmentally harmful enterprises, such local protest movements cannot connect to national movements or agendas. To the limited extent that such options are available, they represent threats rather than opportunities. In today’s Europe, right-wing extremists are attempting to make connections to local protests against the establishment of centres for asylum seekers. However, the local protest movements do not view such overtures as an opportunity to propel a local issue in a more general direction, but rather as a serious threat to their own legitimacy. Representatives of local protest groups counter accusations that they have ties to right-wing extremist groups, warn their own adherents against expressing themselves in any way that could indicate the existence of such ties, and stress the strictly local nature of their movements (e.g., Hubbard, 2005). Even as the emphasis on local motives (e.g., that the planned enterprise would threaten green areas or overstress local infrastructure) makes it possible for local protest groups to avoid directly discussing the enterprises and their clients – ‘the elephant in the room’ – it is also a vulnerable strategy. Siting conflicts can be viewed as ‘frame contests’ primarily between protesting local inhabitants and decision-makers. When the motives of protesting local inhabitants are described as ‘egoistical’, these inhabitants face the task of developing morally and politically resonant frames. One example of how protest frames can be modified in such a situation and find new expressions is the argument that opposition to the establishment of an intended human service enterprise does not have to do with the problems it would cause the local inhabitants, but rather the problems it would cause its intended clients. For example, in Hubbard’s (2005) study of the placement of a refugee camp, representatives of the opposition to the camp stressed that it would not only overstress the infrastructure of a small community but also have negative consequences for the asylum seekers themselves, as the local community was simply too small and isolated to meet the social needs of the refugees. Rather than questioning the need for the camp, or its clients, the opposition to its establishment characterised itself as being in the interests of both the local community and the refugees. Justice framing offers a more radical means of avoiding discussion of the nature of the enterprise or its clients. On one hand, protesting neighbours can cite deficiencies in procedural justice (Manaster, 1995), i.e., deficiencies in the process by which a decision was reached, including the right of participation and access to information and, on the other hand, cite deficiencies in distributive justice, i.e., comparative questions concerning the extent to which different areas are ‘burdened’ by such enterprises. This latter type of frames appears to be common about local protests against the establishment of centres for asylum seekers in Europe. Such rhetoric draws discursive support from the fact that a corresponding discussion of the distribution of refugees is currently being conducted on various geographical scales, i.e., among the member states of the European Union (Carlsen, 2016) and among European governments, regions, and municipalities (Hinger et al., 2016). By citing a justice frame, actors not only avoid questions about the enterprise and its clients but can also gain access to a more resonant frame that ties into widely held general values of democracy, sustainability, and solidarity.
represent a selfish defence of the local community without respect for the greater public interest. Several studies demonstrate that government agencies and corporate actors attempt to discredit local protests as ‘just NIMBY protests’ (e.g., Gibson, 2005; McClymont and O’Hare, 2008). Local environmental protests often develop their frames in a more universalistic direction to neutralise such attacks. These protests can do this in various ways: they can develop their frames so that they are clearly associated with hegemonic discourses (e.g., climate change), they can form coalitions with other local protest groups, and they can create various connections to national or even international environmental organisations (Rootes, 2013). In addition, local environmental protests have increasingly been able to cite a general discourse on social justice in connection with the siting of environmentally harmful enterprises, i.e., a generally held notion of preventing certain population groups from having to bear disproportionate burdens in terms of pollutants, environmental toxins, or other environmental risks (McGurty, 1997). Local environmental conflicts leave room for movements to demonstrate that their defence of the local community is at the same time a defence of the public interest. By developing their frames and connecting to regional, national, or international agendas, local protest movements can escape the limitations of the local context and successfully claim that their protests are not about ‘their own back yard’, but about everyone’s back yard. Local protests against human service sites generally lack such potential for generalisation. Neighbours who protest against, say, the siting of a homeless shelter cannot, in contrast to local inhabitants protesting against a nuclear power plant, hope to characterise their protests as based on ‘principle.’ Nevertheless, we assert here that the framing perspective can enrich research into local protests against human services and help restore to this area of research some of the importance it had towards the end of the last century. However, the focus will be different: If the study of protests against environmentally harmful land use largely concerns the ways in which local movements can step outside their local context, then the study of protests against the siting of human services must, we believe, be based on their being referred to a local rhetoric and instead face the challenge of finding effective forms for making such references. It is our intention in this paper not only to illustrate how the framing perspective can enrich the currently neglected study of local movements against land use for human service enterprises. It is also to identify how research into social movements and the development of the framing perspective can benefit from the inclusion of a new empirical field. 2. Data in search of theory Social movements do not operate in a vacuum. To access public support and be able to argue against decision-makers, they must adapt to the values and rules prevailing in their institutional surroundings and develop frames that correspond to widely held perceptions. In the case of local movements against land use for human services, this entails significant limits on their actions. To be successful in their ‘defence of the neighbourhood’ they cannot openly criticise such services per se or the clients to whom they would provide care, services, or treatment. Such enterprises enjoy broad support in terms of public opinion, and stigmatising characterisations of the clients of such service is made difficult or prevented purely by what Billig (1998) referred to as the ‘norm against prejudice’. In its original meaning, the term NIMBY had, in this context, clear analytic value, as it summarises the dilemma facing local protest movements against land use for human services. Because local protest groups cannot criticise such enterprises or their clients in principle, they are called upon to construct frames addressing the reasons for opposing a specific instance of such land use. In the absence of the possibility of developing a principle-based rhetoric, such movements must refer to a local rhetoric (Gordon and Jasper, 1996).
3. Theory in search of data Plans to establish potentially controversial human services can give rise to various local reactions. The first is non-reaction, i.e., the local inhabitants exhibit no visible reaction. The second type of reaction, expressions of concern, has to do with reactions at the individual level, for example, telephone calls to decision-makers or critical statements in mass media interviews. Speaking of social movements does not become relevant until the third type of reaction, local protests, is present. Neighbours organise into ad hoc organisations or use existing 108
Geoforum 94 (2018) 107–109
Å. Westermark, K. Borell
teaching about Goffman’s sociology at the University of Texas, and it was when the discussions homed in on Goffman’s book Frame Analysis (1974) that he began to perceive the possibilities for cross-pollination (Snow, 2014: 27–28). Social movement research, often from a framing perspective, has since become one of the fastest growing fields in sociology, although this research has had little association with the issues raised during the perspective’s formative years. However, as we have noted here, social movement research has much to gain from returning to the study of protest movements opposing the establishment of human service enterprises: they are local and thus typical of most social movements, and their success or failure, which lacks the ambiguity so often noted in social movement research, can be studied from a lifecycle perspective because such movements are often active only within brief windows of opportunity. Equally important, the framing perspective could inject new vitality to the increasingly marginalized geographical study of reactions to land use for human services and enable geographers to reconnect to the key issues of socio-spatial exclusion that were raised 30–40 years ago, but now with theoretically informed perspectives.
organisations and networks in order to, for example, express their displeasure with the planned establishment of an enterprise by collecting names and holding meetings, i.e., they take action that requires coordination and reach agreement on their common goals and means. We believe that the study of such social movements is of significant potential interest in social movement research, as these movements offer access to the empirical data needed for more comprehensive theory development. Three circumstances merit emphasis: First, growing research into social movements is characterised by an obvious skew, being dominated by movements that are national rather than local in scope. However, this does not reflect the factual circumstances. The overwhelming majority of social movements in the Western world are local, and the indications are that they are apparently increasingly so (McAdam et al., 2005). Studying protest movements opposed to the establishment of controversial human services puts the focus on nearly ideal-typical local movements. Second, the study of local protest movements opposing human service location offers access to the lifecycle perspective that is often missing in social movement research. Research into social movements and the frames they utilise is, as Benford (1997) noted, often static: it dips at random into what is a process in which frames are gradually constructed and reconstructed. In contrast to many national organisations, local protest movements opposing human service sites have extremely finite life spans. They exist only for as long as there are windows of opportunity, i.e., a placement issue can, given the legal limitations that pertain, only be influenced for a limited time. Frames are formulated and modified over weeks and months rather than years and decades. Third, the study of local movements protesting controversial human service siting offers a unique opportunity to study success among movements. Estimating the success of social movements is notoriously problematic. Questions about whether, for example, social movements such as peace or trade union movements have been successful invite answers that, while radically divergent, are all highly reasonable (Walsh et al., 1993). In contrast to national movements, with their broad and often changeable agendas, the success criteria for local movements protesting human service sites are often crystal clear: Did they succeed or fail in preventing the establishment of an unwanted enterprise? Against this background, it becomes possible to study, systematically and comparatively, both the importance that the framing of such movements can have and the importance of mobilization, opposing forces, and local power relationships.
References Billig, M., 1998. The notion of ‘prejudice’: some rhetorical and ideological aspects. Text Talk 8, 91–110. Benford, R.D., 1997. An insider’s critique of the social movement framing perspective. Sociol. Inquiry 67, 409–430. Borell, K., Westermark, Å., 2018. Siting of human services facility and the not in my back yard phenomenon: a critical research review. Commun. Develop. J. 53, 246–262. Carlsen, L., 2016. An alternative view on distribution keys for the possible relocation of refugees in the European Union. Soc. Indic. Res. 130, 1147–1163. Dear, M.J., 1992. Understanding and overcoming the NIMBY syndrome. J. Am. Plan. Assoc. 58, 288–300. Dear, M.J., Taylor, S.M., 1982. Not on Our Street: Community Attitudes to Mental Care. Pion, London. DeVerteuil, G., 2013. Where has NIMBY gone in urban geography? Soc. Cult. Geogr. 14, 599–603. Futrell, R., 2003. Framing processes, cognitive liberation, and NIMBY protest in the U.S. chemical-weapons disposal conflicts. Sociol. Inquiry 73, 359–386. Gibson, T.A., 2005. NIMBY and the civic good. City Commun. 4, 381–401. Gordon, C., Jasper, J.M., 1996. Overcoming the Nimby label: rhetorical and organizational links for local protestors. Res. Soc. Movem. Conflicts Change 19, 159–181. Goffman, E., 1974. Frame Analysis. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Hinger, S., Schäfer, P., Pott, A., 2016. The local production of asylum. J. Refugee Stud. 29, 440–463. Hubbard, P., 2005. Accommodating otherness: anti-asylum centre protest and the maintenance of white privilege. Trans. Inst. Brit. Geogr. 30, 52–65. Manaster, K., 1995. Social Justice Reconsidered: The Problem of Appropriate Precision in a Theory of Justice. University of Illinois Press, Chicago. McClymont, K., O’Hare, P., 2008. ‘We’re not NIMBYs!’ Contrasting local protest groups with idealized conceptions of sustainable communities. Local Environ. 321–355. McAdam, D., Sampson, R.J., Weffer, S., MacIndre, H., 2005. ‘There will be fighting in the streets’: the distorting lens of social movement studies. Mobilization 10, 1–18. McGurty, E.M., 1997. From NIMBY to civil rights: the origins of the environmental justice movement. Environ. Hist. 2, 301–323. Rootes, C., 2013. From local conflict to national issue: when and how environmental campaigns succeed in transcending the local. Environ. Polit. 22, 95–114. Snow, D.A., 2014. Research-biographic foundations of the 1986 frame alignment article. Mobilization 19, 23–45. Snow, D.A., Anderson, L., 1993. Down on Their Luck. A Study of Homeless Street People. University of California Press, Berkley, CA. Snow, D.A., Benford, R.D., 1988. Ideology, frame resonance, and participant mobilization. Int. Soc. Movem. Res. 1, 197–217. Walsh, E., Warland, R., Smith, D.C., 1993. Backyards, NIMBYs, and incinerator sitings: implications for social movement theory. Soc. Probl. 40, 25–38. Wolsink, M., 2006. Invalid theory impedes our understanding: a critique on the persistence of the language of NIMBY. Trans. Inst. Brit. Geogr. 31, 85–91.
4. Conclusion It is ironic that the framing perspective has so far scarcely been utilised to analyse local protests against establishments of human service enterprises, as the perspective was originally formulated in just such a context. David Snow, who was mainly responsible for inspiring the framing perspective, was studying the homelessness problem in Austin, Texas, including the neighbourhood protests that arose when the Salvation Army shelter was seeking a new location (Snow and Anderson, 1993). The protesting neighbours faced a complicated rhetorical task, i.e., how to argue that the facility should not be sited in ‘their own back yard’ without criticising the generally respected social work done by the Salvation Army. As this was playing out, Snow was
109