A STRATEGIC APPROACH TO COLLECTIVE ACTION: LOOKING FOR AGENCY IN SOCIAL-MOVEMENT CHOICES * James M. Jasper † In theories of social movements, the structural models of the last thirty years may have reached the limits of their utility. Future breakthroughs are likely to arise from attention to the microfoundations of political action. The study of strategic choices may be one fruitful new path of research, especially if sociologists can develop an approach to strategy that takes cultural and institutional contexts more seriously than game theory, which has long dominated the study of strategy. As a starting point, I present several strategic dilemmas that organizers and participants face, either explicitly as choices or implicitly as tradeoffs. These choices represent agency in contrast to the structure that has interested scholars for so long. By portraying strategic players as audiences for words and actions, they are also thoroughly cultural. If we can begin to explain the choices faced and the choices made, we will go a long way toward opening up the study of social movements to strategic factors mostly ignored in the dominant models. Viewed as causal mechanisms, choices may offer the microfoundations for rethinking social movement theory. Whatever is given is the condition of a future action, not its limit. —Beatriz Sarlo For thirty years the study of social movements has been dominated by structural metaphors. Insurgents must find “cleavages” among elites; “windows” of opportunity must open for them; participants are recruited through “networks”; social movement organizations compete in a social movement “industry”; the right “frames” must be discovered to express cultural meanings. The field has reflected the structuralist assumptions and ambitions of much of the rest of sociology. An enormous amount of excellent scholarship has been carried out in this paradigm, known first as resource mobilization and later as political process (for a summary, see McAdam et al. 1996). At the same time, researchers have become increasingly aware, implicitly or explicitly, that a lot was missing from these models (Melucci 1996; Benford 1997; Jasper 1997; McAdam et al. 2001; Goodwin and Jasper 2003a, b). If structure is one aspect of social life, agency is the other, and many scholars have searched for ways to incorporate agency into their descriptions and explanations. Some of * Revised version of a paper presented at the 2002 ASA meetings, Chicago. Thanks to Jeff Goodwin, Charlie Kurzman, Sarah Maddison, David Meyer, Ann Mische, Kelly Moore, Francesca Polletta, Julie Stewart, and the members of the Contentious Politics Workshop at Columbia University (especially Emrah Goker and Cecelia Walsh- Russo) for comments on earlier drafts. † Please direct correspondence to James M. Jasper, 346 West 15 th Street, New York, NY 10011-5939: E-mail: jmjasper@juno.com. © Mobilization: An International Journal: 9(1): 1-16 1