The same week that Steven Colbert pretended to mock Occupy Wall Street’s hand signals, I saw them used at an Occupy Boston General Assembly, and my Social Movements class studied the pitfalls of too much and too little “movement culture” – quite a serendipity!
Using the six measures of degrees of movement culture that my students learned from John Lofland’s article, the Occupy movement’s group process seems to be on the far end of the movement-culture spectrum: 1) there seems to be widespread agreement about it; 2) it’s quite distinct, different from the wider culture; 3) its scope reaches into every part of occupiers’ lives together; the consensus rules, including hand signals, are 4) numerous in quantity and 5) have a lot of complexity; and 6) they are very expressive of the protestors’ values and visions. Continue reading
