Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 THE PUZZLE OF INSURGENT COLLECTIVE ACTION
- 2 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH IN THE SHADOW OF CIVIL WAR
- 3 REDRAWING THE BOUNDARIES OF CLASS AND CITIZENSHIP
- 4 FROM POLITICAL MOBILIZATION TO ARMED INSURGENCY
- 5 THE POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS OF DUAL SOVEREIGNTY
- 6 THE REEMERGENCE OF CIVIL SOCIETY
- 7 CAMPESINO ACCOUNTS OF INSURGENT PARTICIPATION
- 8 EXPLAINING INSURGENT COLLECTIVE ACTION
- Epilogue: Legacies of an Agrarian Insurgency
- Appendix: A Model of High-Risk Collective Action by Subordinate Social Actors
- Chronology of El Salvador's Civil War
- References
- Index
- Other Books in the Series
Appendix: A Model of High-Risk Collective Action by Subordinate Social Actors
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 THE PUZZLE OF INSURGENT COLLECTIVE ACTION
- 2 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH IN THE SHADOW OF CIVIL WAR
- 3 REDRAWING THE BOUNDARIES OF CLASS AND CITIZENSHIP
- 4 FROM POLITICAL MOBILIZATION TO ARMED INSURGENCY
- 5 THE POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS OF DUAL SOVEREIGNTY
- 6 THE REEMERGENCE OF CIVIL SOCIETY
- 7 CAMPESINO ACCOUNTS OF INSURGENT PARTICIPATION
- 8 EXPLAINING INSURGENT COLLECTIVE ACTION
- Epilogue: Legacies of an Agrarian Insurgency
- Appendix: A Model of High-Risk Collective Action by Subordinate Social Actors
- Chronology of El Salvador's Civil War
- References
- Index
- Other Books in the Series
Summary
The model presented here will clarify two puzzling aspects of the Salvadoran rural insurgency. First, I show how the reasons for action central to my interpretation account for insurgent collective action, even when the primary material benefits sought by these organizations (access to land) were not contingent on participation. Second, I also want to illuminate how radical forms of campesino collective action, which owed their emergence to extraordinary circumstances – the terror of the late '70s and early '80s and the military stalemate of the mid-'80s – could have persisted after those circumstances had passed.
The formal model presented here draws on the rational actor approach in that individuals decide whether to participate or not based on anticipated costs and benefits, which in this case depend on how many others participate. I draw on Thomas Schelling's (1978) representation of collective action as an n-person coordination game among individuals facing a binary choice to participate or not. It differs from most such models, however, in that the likely outcomes of participation are not evaluated in terms of conventional self-regarding and outcome-oriented preferences. Rather, some individuals value defiance, an intrinsic motivation, and/or pleasure in agency, one contingent on both participating oneself and the action's success.
Moreover, Schelling's tipping model leaves unresolved how a group of individuals move from general nonparticipation to general participation. To model that process, I draw on the work of David Lewis (1969) and of Peyton Young (1996, 1998) on conventions.
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- Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador , pp. 267 - 274Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003