Petras & Zeitlin: Miners & Agrarian Radicalism

Sociology 432: Social Movements

James Petras and Maurice Zeitlin, "Miners and Agrarian Radicalism"

Chapter 7 (82-89) in McAdam & Snow.

American Sociological Review, April 1967, 32: 578-586.

This article makes the case for the importance of allies in the growth of social movements. Potential allies are one important part of the environment of social movements so their strength and willingness to support a movement is part of the political opportunity explanation of social movement success.

We have already seen evidence for the importance of allies in past readings and films:

Jenkins and Perrow's recognition of the importance of church and university support for the United Farm Workers;
Haines's analysis of foundation and private contributions to the civil rights movement;
the role of the faculty in intervening between students and administrators during the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley;

the assistance provided by Nader and his Washington-based organization to Poletown

Background

Where was the strength of the union movement and political radicalism in Chile? Petras and Zeitlin only briefly note why this group was so radical, but it's worth remembering since it fits well with a resource mobilization model of social movement success.

What was the nature of rural society and the relations between Chilean landowners and agricultural workers? How is this similar and different from what describe for California landowners and agricultural workers?

Methods

Petras and Zeitlin use voting results as an index of the political mobilization of agricultural workers. They don't have survey data to analyze actual voters, but they have tabulated election results from municipality voting districts (an "ecological" analysis). What is their index of radical mobilization of agricultural workers?

Results

Table 1 presents the main evidence for the importance of allies. (Table 2) reinforces this evidence but it's enough to concentrate on Table 1. What are the critical percentages for Petras and Zeitlin's argument?

Table 3 complicates the analysis somewhat. Petras and Zeitlin argue that it shows the importance of "class structure" in determining voting. What part of the class structure is important? How do class structure and political allies combine to determine voting in agricultural areas?

Conclusions

What is your one-line summary of Petras and Zeitlin's contribution?

return to:

Sociology 432 home page

list of readings

schedule

Last updated November 9, 2005

comments to: reeve@umd.edu