Dramaturgy and Social Movements: The Social Construction and Communication of Power*

Abstract

This paper seeks to illuminate how social movements collectively construct and communicate power. Drawing on insights from dramaturgy as well as from field research of several movements, the article demonstrates how social movements are dramas routinely concerned with challenging or sustaining interpretations of power relations. Four dramatic techniques associated with such communicative processes are identified and elaborated: scripting, staging, performing and interpreting. It is suggested that movement outcomes hinge in part upon how well activists employ these techniques and manage various emergent contingencies and tensions. The paper concludes with a discussion of several sets of theoretical and empirical implications.