Research

Currently, I am involved in four projects.  Since 1998 I have worked on “The Global Justice Movement International Study: An Analysis of Social Movement Organizations Involved in Global Protests.”  This project is concerned with the effects of social movement organizational characteristics on participation in protests mobilized against global institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).  My dissertation “Mobilizing for Global Justice: Social Movement Organization Involvement in Three Contentious Episodes, 1999-2001” is the primary publication to come from this project so far. The central findings are that access to monetary and organizational resources increase the chances that social movement organizations (SMOs) will participate over several protest episodes and in important sponsoring and organizing roles.  In addition, reliance on resources and being connected to elites has no effect on co-opting SMO involvement.  Finally, most SMOs involved in each protest episode were locally based groups, rather than outside agitators as claimed by authorities and media sources expressing conventional wisdom.  I have recently completed  the “Global Justice Movement National Study Report” which recounts these findings.  At this time I am seeking funding to analyze the importance of networks in pulling SMOs across or out of subsequent protest episodes. Eventually, I will describe the state of the U.S. branch of the global justice movement (GJM) by analyzing conditions that have encouraged some organizations to remain involved, others to shift focus to different issues, and still others to go into hibernation or to expire.

The second project “The Importance of Networks and Legitimacy on Social Movement Mobilization and Decline,” also pulls from my dissertation research. My main collaborator on this project is Bob Edwards at East Carolina University. The project has two goals. The first is to examine the influence of legitimacy on organizational involvement and/or withdrawal from global justice protests following the September 11th terrorist attacks. The second goal is to trace the shift that occurred in 2001 and following as organizations left the U.S. branch of the global justice movement and joined in the antiwar movement. Our most recent article "Legitimacy Management, Preservation of Exchange Relationships, and the Dissolution of the Mobilization for Global Justice Coalition (MGJC)", published in Social Problems, chronicles the dissolution of the MGJC and explains the decisions made by SMO leaders to abandon or disband the coalition. These decisions were made in ways expected to be perceived as legitimate in the eyes of key exchange partners as leaders sought to insulate their organizations from irreparable harm and position them competitively for the uncertainties of the post-911 environment. Future research will look at the importance of social networks in expanding the global justice movement and identification of transnational network ties for organizations involved in G8 protests.

A third project “Global Justice Policing and Protests Study: An Analysis of Policing and Protesting in Western Democracies” examines the shifts in public order policing and protester tactics. The idea for this project started after I observed the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle and published the article “Complexity and Irony in Policing and Protesting: The World Trade Organization in Seattle” (with Gary T. Marx). Collaborators on this project include Gary Marx, John Noakes, and Brian Klocke. Our interest in changes in protest policing has intensified after Noakes, Klocke and I observed the September 2001 anti-war protests held in Washington, DC just weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Several manuscripts related to this project have been published or are in progress. A central finding of our research is that there seems to be a shift occurring in the U.S. policing of protest from “negotiated management” (McPhail, Schweingruber and McCarthy 1998) to what we refer to as “strategic incapacitation.” This new strategy emphasizes the goals of "securitizing society" and isolating or neutralizing the sources of potential disruption often associated with protests. Police achieve these goals through the use of extensive surveillance and information sharing, the use of pre-emptive arrests and less-lethal weapons, and the extensive control of space. Moreover, we have noted that tactics and organizational forms characteristic of “transgressive protesters” (Tilly) have stymied police efforts to control protests, leading in part to their efforts to engage in strategic incapacitation (with questionable success). Articles in a 2007 special issue of Mobilization 12(4) edited by me and Noakes provide a good primer on recent changes in protest policing identified by scholars. My 2011 article "Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since 11 September 2001" provides a concise review of the literature on protest policing and applies strategic incapacitation to an analysis of post-911 protest.  Noakes and I are extending our analysis beyond the U.S. to other western democracies, particularly those hosting G8 and G20 meetings, where mass demonstrations and public order policing will likely occur.  Professor Marx and I are further exploring both the ironies that emerge from collective action and interactions with police, and how police might employ strategic incapacitation across other types of mass gatherings such as sporting events and presidential inaugurations. 

A fourth project "Determinants of Environmental Activism" relies on Euro-barometer data to compare environmental activism across European nations. In a recent publication "Participation in the Environmental Movement" (International Sociology) I show how cultural (values and beliefs), demographic (age, income, education) and national characteristics (e.g., levels of poverty and occupational reliance on natural resources) impact environmental activism. Specifically, environmental activism is influenced primarily by post-materialist values and beliefs, higher education and income, and living in nations with lower levels of poverty, unemployment and agricultural employment, and greater population density. Biographical availability thesis and some assertions of new social movements are undermined by my findings. I am extending this research as longitudinal data becomes available.

I am currently constructing a website to make my data available to others. See my GJM Archive at http://www.class.uidaho.edu/gjmarchive/.

 

To access some of my publications click on a title below.

Gillham, Patrick F. and Bob Edwards. 2011. "Legitimacy Management, Preservation of Exchange Relationships, and the Dissolution of the Mobilization for Global Justice Coalition." Social Problems, 28(3):433-460.

Gillham, Patrick F. 2011. "Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since 11 September 2001." Social Compass 5(7):636-652.

Gillham, Patrick F. 2008. "Participation in the Environmental Movement: Analysis of the European Community." International Sociology, 23(1):67-93.

Gillham, Patrick F. and John Noakes. 2007. “More than a March in a Circle: Transgressive Protests and the Limits of Negotiated Management.” Mobilization 12 (4):371-387.

Noakes, John A. and Patrick F. Gillham. 2007. “Police and Protest Innovation since Seattle.”  Mobilization, 12(4): 335-340.

John A. Noakes and Patrick F. Gillham. 2006. “Aspects of the New Penology in the Policing of Global Justice Protests in the United States,”  In Policing Political Protest After Seattle, edited by Donatella Della Porta, Herbert Reiter and Abby Peterson.  Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

John A. Noakes, Brian V. Klocke and Patrick F. Gillham. 2005. “Whose Streets? Police and Protester Struggles Over Space in Washington, D.C., September 29-30, 2001.”  Policing and Society 15 (3):235-254.

Patrick F. Gillham and Bob Edwards.  2003. “Global Justice Protesters Respond to the September 11th Terrorist     Attacks: The Impact of an Intentional Disaster on Demonstrations in Washington, D.C.”  In Beyond September 11th: An Account of Post-disaster Research, edited by Jacquelyn .L. Monday. Boulder, CO: Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center, University of Colorado.

Patrick F. Gillham. 2003. “Mobilizing for Global Justice: Social Movement Organization Involvement in Three Contentious Episodes, 1999-2001”, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO.

Patrick F. Gillham and Gary T. Marx. 2000. Complexity and Irony in Policing and Protesting: The World Trade Organization in Seattle. Social Justice 27(2):212-236.