This chapter explains how activists in the urban margins decentralize protagonism to transform a mobilizing collective identity into citizenship-building. It uses Gamson’s typology of micromobilizing acts to analyze their face-to-face interactions within three types of encounters: organizing, divesting, and reframing acts. Based on interviews and observations, it shows how activists conceive their collective identity of mobilization as political capital and consequently strategize to diffuse it. In other words, the activists teach each other the identity symbols and values that both promote and validate collective action locally. Within the local social movement community, political capital usually flows from informal leaders to younger, less experienced activists and potential challengers. This socialization process progressively certifies young local activists as community-builders, both individually and collectively. It also makes it more likely for individual leaders to be replaced by others once they decide to quit their role. In turn, this decentralization of protagonism promotes citizenship-building and enduring mobilization, thus creating mobilizational citizenship.

This chapter uses analysis of over 10,000 runaway slave advertisements in an in-depth look at marronnage through the lens of network building, identity formation, and race and solidarity work. Nearly half of the thousands of runaways described in the Les Affiches américaines advertisements fled within a small group of two or more people. Many were racially or ethnically homogeneous maroon groups that rallied around their collective identity, while groups composed of diverse ethnic backgrounds bridged their differences to forge an emerging racial solidarity. The chapter also explores the complex relationships between enslaved people, maroons and free people of color since absconders often had previous relationships with and sought refuge with people beyond their immediate plantation, highlighting the importance of social capital in finding success at marronnage.

This chapter uses analysis of over 10,000 runaway slave advertisements in an in-depth look at marronnage through the lens of network building, identity formation, and race and solidarity work. Nearly half of the thousands of runaways described in the Les Affiches américaines advertisements fled within a small group of two or more people. Many were racially or ethnically homogeneous maroon groups that rallied around their collective identity, while groups composed of diverse ethnic backgrounds bridged their differences to forge an emerging racial solidarity. The chapter also explores the complex relationships between enslaved people, maroons and free people of color since absconders often had previous relationships with and sought refuge with people beyond their immediate plantation, highlighting the importance of social capital in finding success at marronnage.

Protest is ubiquitous in contemporary societies, as is illustrated by any review of recent news headlines. Tarrow and Meyer (1998) refer to the proliferation of protest and its diffusion into everyday life as characteristics of "the social movement society." Social networks are integral to understanding social movement processes. This chapter provides a broad overview of the SNA methodological toolkit, with a focus on ego-networks, so that social movements scholars better understand how networks shape social movement recruitment and support, communication, and social-political influence. The chapter is structured as followed. First, we provide a contextual overview of research on networks, collective action and social movements that underlines the importance of SNA approaches to social movement research. Second, we introduce a set of standard ego-network approaches to social movements and discuss some of the attendant challenges of these approaches. Third, we discuss less well-established qualitative and mixed-methods network approaches to social movements research. Fourth, we describe and discuss some consideration relevant to conducting longitudinal social network analysis, and modeling network dynamics. Finally, we discuss virtual networks as sources of social movements data collection and analysis.