New Theoretical Directions from the Study of Gender and Sexuality Movements Page 1 of 19 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2014. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy ). Subscriber: Oxford University Press - Master Gratis Access; date: 31 October 2014 Subject: Political Science, Comparative Politics, Political Behavior Online Publication Date: Sep 2014 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199678402.013.59 New Theoretical Directions from the Study of Gender and Sexuality Movements: Collective Identity, Multi-institutional Politics, and Emotions Stephen Wulff, Mary Bernstein, and Verta Taylor The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements (Forthcoming) Edited by Donatella Della Porta and Mario Diani Oxford Handbooks Online Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the ways in which studying gender and sexuality movements has influenced the study of social movements more generally. Feminist scholars have demonstrated how gender plays a central role in shaping the emergence, trajectory, and outcomes of movements. Dominant theoretical approaches in the field remain rooted in masculinist assumptions that narrowly define social movements and what counts as legitimate forms of protest. In contrast, studies of gender and sexuality movements have challenged political process and resource mobilization approaches by reconceptualizing power, the types of protest, tactics, and targets that count as legitimate and, in turn, the very definition of social movements and other forms of contentious politics. Our discussion demonstrates contributions significant to the body of research on collective identity, multi-institutional politics, and emotions. We highlight key concepts and theories from the fields of gender and sexuality that have entered the field of social movements. Keywords: LGBT movement, gender and sexuality movements, feminist movement, emotions, multi-institutional politics, identity, discourse, social movement culture, culture and social movements Introduction Since the mid-1980s, a number of scholars have turned to social movement theory to study gender and sexuality movements. However, the dominant theoretical approaches in the field remain rooted in masculinist assumptions that narrowly define social movements and what counts as legitimate forms of protest (Taylor 2010). For example, for a long time social movement scholars overlooked the study of health movements, yet recent studies reveal that the radical branch of the women’s movement became mobilized, in part, through women’s alternative health institutions, like the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (Morgen 2002; Davis 2007). Resource mobilization and political process approaches have tended to treat institutions such as the state and economy as the only credible targets for studying the emergence, nature, and outcomes of social movements (Armstrong and Bernstein 2008; Taylor 1996). The gender bias that inheres in social movement theories is not altogether surprising though considering that these very institutions are fundamentally gendered, as some feminist sociologists have revealed (Acker 1990; Connell 1987). A growing body of work by feminist scholars demonstrates that gender is indeed a pervasive feature of social movements (Blee 1996, 1998; Ferree and Martin 1995; Naples 1992, 1998; Ray 1999; Schneider and Stoller 1995; G. West and Blumberg 1990; Staggenborg and Taylor 2005). Such research has pushed scholars to rethink some fundamental concepts in the field, including the state (Klawiter 2008), collective identity (Taylor and Whittier 1992), organizations (Clemens 1993), framing processes (White 1999), and emotions (Einwohner 1999). Gender is a key explanatory factor in the emergence and trajectory of social protest (Ferree and Roth 1998; Abdulhadi 1998; J. Taylor 1998) and common features such as leadership patterns, mobilization, movement participation, strategies,