Collective Identity

Definition: the shared definition of a group that is established through the members’ common experiences, interests, and beliefs. In terms of a protest movement, this identity is “who we are” and gives a basic structure to the movement in terms of its participants.

Example: Melucci discusses how social movements involve a “plural nature of the actors involved” (344). He discusses one group, which are the “’human capital’ professionals, who experience both the surplus of potentialities offered by the system and its constraints” (344). This group can “shift from a position of conflict to a counter-elite role…since the institutionalization processes occur frequently and rapidly” (344). His example for this group is “environmental groups with high professional skills [that] can easily become consultant firms working on environmental problems” (344). A specific example of an environmental consulting firm is CH2M Hill, which focuses on meeting the natural resource and infrastructure needs of the world in a sustainable way for the environment, society, and economy (CH2M Hill).

From the text: Collective identity is “concerned with the processes by which individuals evaluate and recognize what they have in common and decide to act together” (339). Melucci discusses how the collective identity level can be explained by mobilization potential, recruitment networks, and motivation to participate. Mobilization potential is “an interactive and negotiated perception of action opportunities and constraints common to a certain number of individuals” (339). Recruitment networks “play a fundamental role in the process of involving individuals” and “the networks of relationship already present in the social fabric facilitate the processes of involvement and make the individual’s investment in the collective action less costly” (339). The people who are part of a movement “interact, influence each other, negotiate within these networks, and produce the cognitive and motivational frames of reference necessary for the action” (340). The motivation to participate “is constructed and consolidated in interaction” and “a determinant influence on motivation is exerted by the structure of the incentives, whose value originates at the level of the relationship networks connecting individuals” (340). Melucci calls the “process of ‘constructing’ an action system…collective identity” (342). This identity “is an interaction and shared definition produced by several individuals and concerned with the orientations of action and the field of opportunities and constraints in which the action takes place: by ‘interactive and shared’ I mean a definition that must be conceived as a process, because it is constructed and negotiated through a repeated activation of the relationships that link individuals” (342). A collective identity has two components, which are “the internal complexity of an actor…and the actor’s relationship with the environment” (342). As a process in its entirety, collective action has three dimensions: “(1) formulating cognitive frameworks concerning the ends, means, and field of action, (2) activating relationships between the actors, who interact, communicate, influence each other, negotiate, and make decisions, (3) making emotional investments, which enable individuals to recognize themselves” (343).

Works Cited:

CH2M Hill. CH2M Hill, Inc. Web. 

Melucci, Alberto. “Getting Involved: Identity and Mobilization in Social Movement.” International Social Movement Research, vol. 1, 1988, p. 338-345.