I’m having some difficulty finding a reference for this, but I know that some must exist. Any help?
Is this homework? If not then look into social movement theory. You’ll find adequate examples of messages being mainstreamed in an effort to achieve polity. If so, then don’t.
It’s not homework. Regardless, I’ve looked into social movement theory but have failed to find this point. I’ll keep looking though. Thanks!
If you don’t get what you need by Monday, email me and remind me to check out the sources at my office. All my social movement theory sources are there, but I’ll be glad to look into it for you. What immediately comes to mind is Gitlin’s book on the Weather Underground and Clarence Lo’s book on grassroots tax revolt in California.
I would question if this is even true.
It certainly isn’t true all the time. For one example, as the Muslim religion has become mainstream and the dominant religion in areas, the Wahhabi/Salafi fundamentalists have gained control, and made Muslim ideology more extreme, not watered down.
Thanks, CateAyo.
Well, I shorthanded it a bit. To spell it out more, what I’m looking for is something that suggests that those who are at the forefront of a movement are connected to the ideologies by direct experience, where those who adopt it later are disconnected from the sources of the ideology and just end up emulating the salient behaviors that they perceive as being signifiers of the movement.
You might find Lee Harris’s short polemic Civilization and its Enemies interesting. Much of the book focuses on the philosophy of radical movements and how and why they fail or succeed. It’s not exactly academically rigorous, though.
In religion, it’s about leadership based on the authority of the person who has the direct revelation, and what happens as the movt. grows, esp. after the death of the founder. See Max Weber on the routinization of charisma for the granddaddy of all that theory.