Persistent Pacifism: How Activist Commitment is Developed and Sustained* JAMES DOWNTON, JR. & PAUL WEHR Department of Sociology, University of Colorado, Boulder * This study was supported by the Council on Research and Creative Work, University of Colorado. Some of the points made in this article are discussed at greater length in Downton & Wehr (1997). The interview guide used in this research is available at [http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/activist]. Abstract How and why do activists persist in their commitment to a social movement beyond its initial mobilization phase? How do they manage their commitments? What role does creativity play in helping them keep their peace commitment intact over the long term? These are questions explored in this study. Based on extensive interviews with thirty persistent peace activists, a theory of sustained commitment is developed. It encompasses how people become available for peace activism and how political and social contexts affect their willingness to join and stay. It also identifies important social and personal factors that help to sustain commitment. These include creating an activist identity, integrating peace work into everyday life, holding beliefs that sustain activism, feeling bonded to a peace group, cultivating opportunities for action, sharing a peace vision with other activists, and managing responsibilities, criticism, and burnout. Persistent peace activists are rational in selecting courses of action, but also creative in the way they fashion their lives, manage their conunitments, avoid burnout, and design and carry out projects. This creativity is an important factor contributing to pacifist persistence, yet it is a topic that has been largely neglected in collective action research. The authors argue for a stronger emphasis on 'creative action' in future research about activists and how they sustain their commitment in the face of many odds. 1. The Peace and Social Justice Movement In recent decades, the peace and social justice movement has expanded noticeably, particularly in North and Latin America and Europe. For example, of 139 peace movement organizations in the USA surveyed in 1992, 82% had been formed in the 1970s and 1980s (Colwell & Bond, 1994:17). While some of those organizations have expired with the Cold War, many continue. The movement has also changed in character. It has evolved from one of largely northern and western peace organizations responding to particular wars and social grievances, into a global movement of many groups at different levels using nonviolent action to resist violence and injustice (Wehr et al., 1994). In some cases, as with SERPAJ in Latin America, the movement has changed government policy from the outside. In others, such as the German Green party and the Serbian democracy movement, it works partly from within. These diverse groups now form a loose global network of nonviolence organizations working for change, largely in the Gandhian spirit. One could say that a permanent peace and justice lobby is now active in most nations. Certainly, this broadening of peace action is related to both a proliferation of nongovernmental organizations and a general surge in post-war social movement activity observed by collective action researchers. Apart from some studies of prominent leaders of movements, however, we know relatively little about the continuing participation of activists once they join. Such knowledge is essential for developing more effective movements for social change. This study should expand that knowledge while it builds on what collective action theory in general has contributed to our understanding of social movement participation. 2. Collective Action Theory There are three dominant theoretical perspectives on participation in social movements. The first view, developed by collective behavior and social disorganization theorists, emphasizes the irrational and emotional origins of mass behavior. It tends to focus on the crowd, millennial movements, behavior in times of disaster, and explains mass behavior in each case as arising from generalized beliefs which motivate large numbers of people to take action. This theoretical approach was heavily influenced by the efforts of social scientists following World War 11 to explain fascism and connnunism. Resource mobilization theory is a second perspective. Its proponents assume the rational behavior of activists and characterize challenge movements as rational extensions of institutional behavior. They have been particularly interested in how movements recruit members and mobilize resources. Their emphasis has been on movement organizations and their mobilization of resources and the rational choice of people to participate. A related idea is that of political opportunity structure, the openings and availability of resources within a political system which might exist for a social movement during a particular moment in history. As that structure of opportunity opens, movement organizations will rationally exploit it. The third and largely European theoretical perspective has developed around the notion that post-World War 11 movements are of a different character and membership than earlier ones. They are seen as a response to the invasion of the personal sphere, or life world as Husserl and Habermas have termed it, by the state and the corporation. They are movements of personal and group identity, of subculture formation, and of ideological conviction more than material deprivation. This New Social Movements view emphasizes how these contemporary movements interact with one another (Klandermans et al., 1988; Katsiaficas, 1997). 2.1 Participation Important questions for collective action theorists have been why people do or do not join a movement and, more recently, once they join, why some continue while others leave. The three theoretical perspectives explain joining differently. A major obstacle for resource mobilization theorists, who see rational choice as the motivation, is the 'free rider' problem. Most people who might benefit from a social movement do not get directly involved in it. Some may not have the time to participate; others may hold back because of the risks involved. Still others may be offended by some aspect of a movement's ideology or method of protest. But the largest group of nonparticipants are known by collective action theorists as 'free riders'. They refrain from joining because they quite rationally anticipate sharing in a movement's rewards without personal effort or risk (Olson, 1965). The free rider problem has stumped collective action theorists by and large although Lichbach's work on the 'Rebel's Dilemma' has substantially clarified the factors that tend to cause a beneficiary of a movement either to participate or to watch from the sidelines. He carefully identifies over thirty solutions to this dilemma, essentially falling into four sectors: Market, community, contract, and hierarchy. In the market realm, for example, a person may choose to participate because of increased benefits from doing so; in community, participation may arise from the bandwagon effect; in contract, it may emerge from the establishment of an activist governing system which sets rules and sanctions; in hierarchy, it may be encouraged by the establishment of a monitoring system for identifying slackers. He argues that each solution to the 'Rebel's Dilemma' is flawed. Only by combining solutions is social activism assured. What solutions are chosen will also depend on the structure of relationships between the activist group and the governing unit's posture toward it. If the relationship is adversarial, one set of solutions will be tried; if cooperative, another. In this sense, how social activists solve the dilemma is part of a political equation (Lichbach, 1994, 1995). At the heart of this is a personal calculation: Will the benefits of participation outweigh the costs for me? The answer to this question, according to Lichbach, will determine whether someone decides to participate in a social action, such as a demonstration, or stay home. In essence, for the free rider, not one of the more than thirty solutions that Lichbach discusses, by itself, would be an acceptable rational justification for becoming involved. Despite the reasons why most do not participate in social movements, many do and some for long periods. They do so partly for 'collective goods' such as security, but also because of the 'selective' or personal incentives a movement offers: Material gain sometimes, nonmaterial rewards such as the opportunity to publicly express deeply-held beliefs and values, a sense of solidarity and connection with like-minded others, membership in an organization working for a desired change, even the development of useful organizing skills. As Lichbach argues, it is the combining of solutions to the 'Rebel's Dilemma' that makes activist participation possible. Thus, examining how people do that is at the heart of understanding activist persistence, and this is partially determined by the political environment within which the social action takes place. Some partial explanations of how and why people join movements are worth noting here. McAdam emphasizes how the availability of participants arises from their freedom from personal responsibilities and institutional constraints (McAdam, 1988). Snow, Zurcher & Ekland-Olson (1980:787-801) stress the significance of voluntary associations like civic clubs and churches as movement recruiting networks. A second important question for collective action theorists is why some participants, albeit a relatively few, stay active in the movement for long periods while most do not. Participants' staying-power might be explained by their reason for joining. Some movement joiners are identity-seekers (Glasser, 1972). If they find what they seek in a movement and its organizations, they tend to stay. Others join to achieve a particular short-term goal: To end a war, make a personal statement about violence, or avoid military conscription. If and when they achieve the goal, they leave. Still others stay for both identity and goals. As a movement institutionalizes, for example, the professionals who run its organizations are motivated both by identity investment and material goals. Those who study social movements have only recently begun to identify the personal attributes that contribute to persistent activism. McAdam's study of US civil rights activists, for example, describes how people come to and stay in movement work, free from economic and other constraints, attitudinally affiliated with movement goals, and located within networks of political activism (McAdam, 1988). Sustained activist commitment is an indispensable part of a movement's formation and survival. It is a particularly relevant issue for the peace movement, with its somewhat episodic, yet somehow enduring character. By what means do long-term peace activists come to peace action, then develop and manage their commitment to the movement over long periods despite disappointments and setbacks? This question of how and why activists persist in their commitment over the long term seemed to us an important one to study. Knowledge of what causes participant commitment to continue is essential information both for peace movement strategists around the world and for collective action scholars who want to better understand social movement growth and dynamics. 3. A Theory of Sustained Commitment Our theory of sustained commitment as a primary determinant of persistent activism was developed from our study of 30 Colorado peace activists. Our methodological approach was qualitative, using in-depth interviews to collect data. Large-scale quantitative surveys are used to test hypotheses and to generalize. In contrast, the goal of qualitative studies is to achieve depth, in order to reveal hidden aspects of a research question within the life experiences of people. For example, in our focused interviews, the objective was to probe deeply into the lives of activists to uncover the essential factors which influenced their capacity to persist. Because of the small number of activists studied, our theory of pacifist persistence must be viewed as exploratory. Yet, such theorizing is useful because, as a focused qualitative study, it identifies key factors in activist persistence from the accounts of the activists themselves. Some of these factors will be obvious, but, in theory development, the point is to integrate what is revealed by respondents, obvious or not. Out of necessity, our theory will include obvious and more obscure factors as they work together to produce persistence. It is the combination of the factors which is a key to understanding what keeps pacifists active. We acknowledge the very limited nature of our study. It concerns local peace action in a limited region in a single nation. It was not designed for replication in other societies, although others could perhaps test our model with a culturally-adjusted subset of our questions. A general model was not our goal in this study. While a theory derived from such a small sample can only be tentative, it can nevertheless be important in stimulating qualitative studies in other countries. It might also become the basis for a large activist survey leading to important social scientific generalizations. 3.1 The Study Participants We studied 30 long-term activists, 20 who had remained active in the peace movement for at least five years and 10 others who had earlier either shifted to other movements or left activism entirely. Comparing the three groups allowed us to explore why some people maintain their pacifist commitments while others fall away. Although space constraints prevent a thorough discussion of the shifters and dropouts here, we found them more likely than persisters to have weak bonds to their peace organizations; to feel that peacemaking was less urgent after the end of the Cold War, which freed them to turn to other life goals; to have competing responsibilities they could no longer manage and still meet their commitments as peace activists; or to have had disillusioning experiences within their peace organizations.' Study participants were each interviewed for approximately two hours. They were a diverse group reflecting different geographical regions, social classes, and types of peace work. Eighteen were female and twelve were male, ranging in age from 24 to 86, though most were between 40 and 60. Twenty held advanced college degrees, but without correspondingly high incomes. Their modest incomes, set against high educational achievement, reflected the conscious decision of many of them to live a materially simple life as the core of their peace careers. The diverse occupational profile of these activists includes countercultural and conventional worlds of work, low paying jobs within peace movement organizations, and regular nine-to-five employment, sometimes pursued only part-time to be free for peace action. Some earned a meager income from canvassing neighborhoods, leading nonviolence trainings, organizing protests, and providing mediation services. What Oberschall (1973:152) calls the 'free professions' were found among our participants: Lawyers, university faculty, and writers. The helping professions were also well represented: Social worker, physician, health worker, and medical secretary. Even the IBM systems engineer and the university administrator were there. Alongside these professionals were the tea taster, the migrant labor coordinator, and the professional herbalist. Our activists averaged 20 years in the movement, altogether representing 524 years of peace action. While they were members of about 30 peace movement organizations, their peace action was largely concentrated in the four organizations through which we contacted them: The American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker service organization), Peace Action (formerly SANE FREEZE), the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Rocky Mountain Peace Center. In this article, we focus on what we learned about sustained commitment from the 20 persisters. From their experiences, a theory of sustained commitment is developed, one that might be tested in similar studies in other societies. 3.2 The Theoretical Framework Our theory of persistent pacifism is nested within a broader framework of commitment dynamics: How people become available for peace activism as their commitment develops, how context affects their inclination to join and stay, and how their commitment is sustained by the interaction of crucial social and personal factors. Persisters come to the movement through availability, which is determined in two ways. First, they are attitudinally predisposed to engage in peace action because of pacifist beliefs they hold with deep conviction. They have developed those beliefs in certain life settings and time periods, and from their experiences. Family and religious life during childhood exert particularly strong influences. Second, their adult life situations permit them to become available. Often, early adulthood is a time when persisters, relatively free of other responsibilities and constraints, first come to the movement. Initially, situational availability may be largely determined by chance but, increasingly, persisters consciously shape their lives in order to stay active. Persistent peace activists both join the movement and do its work within contexts which directly influence how long they will stay active. The widest of these are the national and global settings where goverru-nent policies, media attention and interaction within peace action networks impact local activists. There are also the immediate contexts in which the persisters work: Their local peace groups, communities and social networks. Peace activist persistence depends on features and events in both the larger and local contexts: The permanent presence of local targets of resistance such as military installations, the level of international tension, the density of peace organizations and activists. Finally, there are a number of commitment-sustaining factors which influence the depth of persisters' involvement and their ability to stay active over the long term. A number of these factors can be cultivated by peace and justice organizations to draw new people into commitment and to reinforce their activists' persistence and effectiveness. In the next section, we reveal the pathway by which persisters joined the movement--their beliefs and values, their life patterns. In subsequent sections, we will examine the contexts of their action and why they stayed. 4. Why Persisters Join: Availability Our persisters came to the movement because they were 'available' to do so. The concept of availability refers to how inclined and able one is to pursue a particular course of action, which will affect one's willingness to join a movement or to stay involved in it.' Two aspects of availability are especially important: Attitude and life situation. Attitude is crucial, where availability arises from a person's beliefs, life experiences and depth of conviction. One's social situation is equally important, where the freedom to act hinges on the pattern of everyday life constraints. Thus, people become available for collective action when they have been soci@ed to move in that direction (attitudinal availability) and when their life circumstances provide the time, money, and energy for their commitment to activism (situational availability). 4.1 Attitudinal Availability: Beliefs Attitudinal availability is the propensity to pursue peace action because one's beliefs are in harmony with the movement's goals and means. Those beliefs must be maintained if peace activism is to continue. Our persisters had been socialized--some early in life and others much later--to hold pacifist beliefs such as the importance of helping others; the need to shape public policy to reflect peace and social justice principles; the utility of nonviolent direct action for producing change; the importance of personal responsibility; and the need for peace action in realizing global peace and social justice. Persisters were, then, ethically prepared to assume the activist role and they deepened their beliefs through involvement with kindred spirits in the peace community. 4.2 Socialization to Pacifist Beliefs Perhaps no concept is more important for understanding commitment and its continuity than belief. Beliefs are ideas we are socialized to think are true and it is their meaning as 'truth' which gives them the power to shape our perception of social reality and to affect our behavior. Beliefs begin to form during early socialization and become the foundation of our social constructions of reality (Berger & Luckman, 1966). As children, we are exposed to the beliefs of our parents and significant others. We internalize them so gradually that we are unaware that our perceptions of others and the world are based on the social constructions of our families, churches, and schools. We do not know we have been socialized. Unaware of how we acquired our beliefs, we naturally regard them as the 'truth'. It is our confidence in their validity, especially ethical convictions prescribing moral behavior, which gives them such a powerful influence on our action. Peace activists, like everyone else, are socialized in this way. From influential people in their lives they adopted a belief system built around the goals of peace and social justice and then embraced the appropriate ethical and political behavior to achieve them. Through the teachings and example of significant others, they embraced several peace-supportive principles. Learning to help others. Persisters in our study learned that helping others was a moral duty. They were taught at home and in church to 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. They learned to identify with the poor, to understand the social causes of poverty, racism, and sexism, and to feel a comradeship with the oppressed. Learning to be critical of social institutions. Their family and school experiences taught some persisters to question the legitimacy of certain institutions, an inclination toward social criticism furthered by movements of the 1960s--for civil rights, for peace in Vietnam, and for women's liberation. This critical attitude toward social institutions and authority, especially in colleges and universities, made our persisters angry with the political system, preparing them for enduring peace activism. Without such political disaffection and criticism of conditions and policies, people are unlikely to persist as agents of social change. Learning to see activism as problem-solving. While some persisters avoided radical politics and worked in more moderate ways to reform the system, most felt that sweeping political changes were necessary and were achievable by determined nonviolent action. This belief that peace action was a solution moved them to embrace it as a way to change the political system. They knew that, given the seriousness of the crisis they perceived, extraordinary means were necessary. Learning to be socially responsible. The worldview of persisters included a strong sense of personal responsibility to work for peace. Being socially responsible defined who they were and became a part of their identities. Failure to act on behalf of peace and social justice would have made them feel guilty. In fact, most could not imagine a life without such activism. Learning that peace action is urgent. Persisters felt a sense of urgency about peace action, a belief that remained strong over time. Before joining, many developed the belief that peace work was urgent as a result of the Vietnam War and the threat of nuclear holocaust as a deadly consequence of superpower emnity. In any particular persister's experience, some of these teachings would be more influential than others, but all seemed essential for the formation and durability of their commitment. Socialized to embrace such beliefs and values, persisters were especially sensitive to problems such as the threat of war and other forms of state violence, and the presence of glaring class, racial, ethnic and gender inequalities. Those issues have been the stimulus for the movement's formation and the reason activists participate, sometimes at considerable personal risk. Persisters in our study became involved in social activism because they felt those issues were significant and the need for a new social and political order was pressing. They hoped a nonviolent and egalitarian society would eventually emerge. 4.3 Situational Availability: Life Pattern The ethical readiness to pursue activism (attitudinal availability) must coincide with the practical ability to act (situational availability), if a strong commitment is to form and be sustained. Situational availability is determined by a person's daily life pattern and how it either facilitates activism or inhibits it. People who are working full-time, married with young children, in debt, or in poor health would normally be less free to undertake peace action, even if they were ethically predisposed to do so. By comparison, people who are in careers with more flexible time schedules or who live communally would likely have more time and social support to be active because of their life situation. So might a healthy person who is unmarried and has no children. Activists can control situational availability to some extent. In fact, persisters were creative in designing their lives so they could be available. Some worked part time or developed careers which gave them time for peace action. Others had retired or were homemakers with spare time for community work. Some postponed marriage and having children. Most developed simple life styles which required only moderate incomes. A few created or joined peace communes where making money and raising children were shared, freeing them for movement work. In various ways, these activists mapped out their lives so they could remain involved. Attitudinal and situational availability are important interlocking concepts for understanding how and why peace commitments form and continue. Either, by itself, cannot ensure the continuation of a peace commitment. For long-term peace careers to develop, attitudinal and situational availability must be continually cultivated by the activists themselves. This effort can be aided by the movement community, to the extent that it reinforces members' fundamental beliefs and helps them arrange their lives so movement work is possible. 5. Contexts for Action We learned from our persisters that the intensity and duration of their commitment varied with the opportunities for and conditions motivating activism. Thus, the continuity of activism will be explained to a degree by the contexts where it develops and continues. Both the activists' initial engagement and their persistence in the movement develop in the local settings where they live and do their movement work: Peace groups, churches, workplaces, friendship networks, schools, food cooperatives, parenting groups. Those are primary locations for recruitment and participation in social movements, what in collective action theory are known as 'micromobilization contexts'. Our study of persistence gave primary attention to those micromobilization settings. Although activist commitment takes shape and matures in those smaller contexts, the larger macromobilization arena exerts strong influences upon local activism. National and international political forces and events shape local projects and opportunities. For example, national economic expansion and political liberalization will significantly influence local activism and commitment. Political opportunities for peace action improved during the 1980s in the USA. The government's willingness to tolerate nonviolent protest had been increasing steadily, as it learned to respond to demonstrations without using police violence. The movement's imaginative use of nonviolent action earned it much public credibility, which its leaders learned to exploit as political opportunity shifted between local and national levels (Miller, 1994:393-406). The development of such 'structures of political opportunity' would increase persistent activism, as it would open new channels for movement pressure. The concept of opportunity structure is used by Tarrow and others to analyze points of public access to policy-making, for example, changes in government presenting new openings for political influence through collective action. We extend the concept here to describe opportunities for such action at the level of the individual activist (Tarrow, 1989). Also, the more open a society is to structural change, the more activists are likely to believe such change is possible, and thus to persist in movement work. Where they exist together, opportunity and hope can help to keep activists involved over the long term. But threat, such as that of nuclear war, can also be a crucial determinant of activist commitment. The levels of anxiety and frustration were very high among Europeans and North Americans who were concerned about peace in the 1980s. Cold War rivalry had taken several menacing forms: Euromissile deployment in Europe; low intensity warfare in Latin America; anticipation of Star Wars and Nuclear Winter around the globe. In Colorado, local nuclear war installations were a constant and visible reminder of the threat and were highly influential in sustaining activist commitment over long periods. Such dangerous and politically provocative facilities as the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver stimulated protests for two decades, drawing thousands of people from throughout North America. In the 1980s, opportunity, hope, and strain created a macrocontextual climate conducive to sustained peace commitment in North America and Europe. In the USA, the seriousness of the I 1 problems and an expanded structure of political opportunity stimulated hope among activists, who were thereby encouraged to build their lives around the movement. Conditions within its micromobilization contexts helped build and sustain their conunitinent and prepared them to join when the political moment was ripe and demanded action--the accessibility of local targets of protest, bonding to and within their peace organizations, and personal aspects of their lives, such as local support communities of like-minded people. 5.1 Opportunity For each person who is attitudinally and situationally available to participate in the movement, a concrete set of opportunities must be present in order to transform readiness into action. For example, where people live is important. Someone living in a small town in a large country may be attitudinally and situationally available for peace action but be so far from its physical targets such as military installations or from peace movement organizations that he or she does nothing. Our study participants, living in metropolitan Denver with numerous military installations nearby, had opportunities for action within easy reach. Many peace organizations in the area were directing nonviolent action at targets such as Rocky Flats. There were large numbers of citizens ready to be mobilized for peace, first into consensus communities, as Klandermans would call them, then into direct action (Klandermans, 1988:173-196). There was also a dense network of peace and envirom-nental organizations, whose interests often converged around goals like the closing of Rocky Flats, which were ready to mobilize that consensus and readiness for action. In short, people who were available to the movement did not lack the opportunity to take action. Opportunity refers to the possibilities for action exploitable by peace organizations or by activists initiating their own projects. When such opportunities are easily accessible to those who have the proper ethical inclination, their step into peace action is likely, if they are available and believe peace action is urgent. Going to a rally, attending a meeting, distributing literature--these are individual steps toward deeper involvement. Taking action, however small, can be a turning point, because by establishing contact with other activists, their organizations and connnunities, our persisters became engaged in the work. Peace commitments begin because people decide to act rather than merely contemplate action. They are available in attitude and life situation, the opportunity presents itself, the moment is right, and they approach the peace conununity and become involved. Joining a peace group can dramatically change one's way of life as priorities are shifted to make time for activism. It can represent an ethical turning point for a person. Wars and social movements present a moral dilemma for the potential activist--do nothing and play it safe or do something to stop the killing and social injustice, take a risk, and perhaps make a difference. As issues of war and violence polarize attitudes, pressure mounts on the individual to resolve the dilemma by taking a stand on the ethical issues. If the decision to participate in the movement is based on one's greater need or desire to live on 'higher moral ground', that ethical shift may become the basis of persistent peace activism. Our study participants related how, directly confronted with violence and social injustice, they were forced to struggle with the moral issues, take a stand, then take part in protests at the risk of public ridicule, even physical harm. Once the act of joining the movement occurs, however, our persisters' sustained conunitment evolved gradually. There was no 'identity crisis' leading to a sudden conversion, a point Hannon (1990:217-232) emphasizes in his life course view of peace commitment. The evolution appeared to be a gradual convergence of socialization influences, social affiliations, the uniqueness of the historical moment, social criticism, and opportunities for action. Hannon's findings, from his study of activists in the Pledge of Resistance against US military involvement in Central America, confirm our own. He emphasizes the influence of several conditions in the formation of committed activists: Early religious socialization, with its utopian vision of society, countercultural ethic, and communitarian experience; the college experience as a radicalizing influence, bringing awareness of social injustice; role models mentoring them along radical lines; and political involvement with others of similar conviction. 6. Why Persisters Stay: Commitment-Sustaining Factors Certainly, the beliefs and life patterns bringing our persisters to the movement also work to keep them there, as do the contexts within which they live and work. But we learned of other factors which act more directly to support a persister's conunitinent. Some of those influences, such as bonding and vision sharing, are located primarily in the activist's membership in groups, organizations, and networks where they live and do their movement work. Other factors, like management skills, personal growth and satisfaction, and creativity issue more from the activist's learning and development. We will look, in turn, at each of these--membership, management, personal benefit, and creativity. 6.1 The Persister as Member Our persisters' commitment to peace action depended heavily on how closely they were connected with the movement communities in which they lived and worked. We evaluated two dimensions of that connection, bonding and visioning. The strength of a commitment can best be determined by observing how consistently a person pursues a particular course of action.' Asking people how committed they are is, of course, a less reliable measure than watching what they do. While we could not observe the everyday activity of our study participants, we could roughly determine the strength of their commitment by learning how strongly they were bonded to their peace organizations and how those ties reinforced it.' Kendrick's research has shown the significance of such ties in the movement's recruitment and retention of activists (Kendrick, 1991:91-111). Bonding to the peace group's principles. The more closely aligned an activist's beliefs with the principles of the peace group they join, the greater the likelihood that a personal bond will form to its ideology. There was a strong correspondence between our respondents' beliefs and their organization's principles, especially regarding the use of consensus in making decisions, the emphasis on nonviolence, the linking of peace with social justice, and the strong undercurrent of environmental concerns. This ideological compatibility helped connect these activists to the broader peace movement and sustained their commitment over the long term. Bonding to the organization. The way people evaluate the performance of their peace organization is an important indicator of how attached to it they feel. Activists who bond to the organization are likely to express support for its goals and to show appreciation for its ways of working and how it handles internal conflict and external crises. The way a peace organization functions bears directly on its ability to preserve the commitments of its members. Participants must feel good about their organization: For the opportunities it provides for creativity, for the support it gives to individual efforts, for the positive working atmosphere it creates, and for the effectiveness of its operating style and democratic structures and procedures. As a group, persisters reported positive feelings about how their peace groups were organized and run, despite some frustration with the length of time required to make decisions by consensus. Bonding to leaders. Expressions of appreciation and support for a peace organization's leaders indicate the presence of a bond to leadership. This attachment is likely to strengthen a member's commitment. Our persisters felt that the leaders of their groups were performing well, even regarding some as model peace activists. Yet, of the four types of bonding examined, personal attachment to leaders appeared to be the least important because of the peace movement's collective leadership ethic. With its emphasis on equality, participatory democracy, and shared responsibility, the movement places less importance on individual leaders. In fact, there is a pronounced concern that such leaders not be elevated above the conununity. Consequently, bonding to leaders seemed less important in determining how conunitment was sustained than other factors. More influential was their perception of how democratically and effectively their organizations operated, and how they felt about the people with whom they worked. Yet, most judged the leaders of their organizations to be good and effective people, suggesting some loyalty to them as well. Bonding to the peace community. Positive feelings toward co-workers and close friendships with them indicate the presence of bonding to the peace community. If such relationships exist, we can assume that a member's commitment will be strengthened and thus be more likely to survive. Close relationships within the movement, mutual respect, and common experience draw members together into a community of caring and hope. These ties can compensate for weaker bonds they might have with the organization or its leaders. Social networks foster the formation of group identity and commitment as other research has noted. For example, Melucci (1988:329-348) shows how collective identity develops among movement members within their social networks. His findings confirm the observations of Gerlach and Hine (1970) about the positive influence of social networks on participation and commitment generally. Likewise, the significance of countercultural networks for drawing people into movement activity is illustrated in Kriesi's (1988:41-82) work on Dutch peace action. Since no bond by itself is likely to preserve a commitment, our activists' entire bonding pattern was examined. We needed to know how many bonds existed: Was there attachment to the peace group's principles, to its organizational structure, to its leaders, and to the community? Also, what was the strength of each of those connections? For most of our persisters, all four bonds were present and, while intensity varied across them, they were solid enough to help sustain a commitment over time. 15 Sharing the Peace Vision. Beliefs held in common with coworkers appear to reinforce the persistence of peace activism. Our persisters shared a vision of a peaceful world, agreed that eliminating war, violence, and social injustice was the means to its realization and committed themselves to a life of peace activism. This vision was part of a shared reality continually reinforced within and outside their organizations through frequent communication with one another. This shared perception of a preferred future and the means to achieve it integrated persisters into the community and provided them with a common world view. It also defined the problems to be solved, established a course of action and offered a rationale for continuing movement work, as well as providing a common discourse to give it meaning and coherence. The social reality shared by persisters differed in an important respect from the perceptions of those we studied who stayed active only for a while. Persisters saw themselves as a small, dedicated group distinct from the thousands who dropped out of activism after a short time or who entered the movement at intervals in response to major crises. In short, persisters know they are persisters, keeping at it while others come and go. Sharing a perception of their unique persister role keeps them conunitted over the long term and creates a cohesiveness among them. This 'staying power', combined with their vision of a peaceful world emerging sometime in the future, gives them the tenacity and confidence to continue their movement work. 6.2 The Persister as Manager An activist commitment must be managed if it is to endure, so activists must be clever in shaping their lives for prolonged peace work. Managing support and criticism. An enduring peace commitment needs wholehearted backing from those close to the activist. Our persisters were encouraged by spouses, children, parents and friends. Often those supporters made significant sacrifices so the activist's work could continue. Strong encouragement also came from fellow movement members. Such support encouraged persisters to keep with the work, helped them deal with discouragement, and provided time and other resources so they could pursue their peace action with consistency. They were especially sensitive to this need for dependable support and they shaped their social lives so they could receive it. Persistent activists cannot escape criticism from members of their extended family or others whose ideological leanings differ from their own. Our activists commonly used three responses to such criticisms: They discounted them, knowing they were based on irreconcilable differences of belief; they insulated themselves by Iiiniting their contact with the critics; and they employed humor to remove the sting from harsh words. These methods worked in part because activists had compensating support from more significant family members and close friends. Managing competing responsibilities. An activist's commitment is set within a larger constellation of obligations to family, job, and friends. Persisters balanced movement and nomnovement demands creatively. Many chose to live a materially simple life to reduce income pressures on their movement work. Some took or created employment with flexible time schedules so they could more easily integrate peace action into their lives. Others found lowpaying jobs in their peace groups, especially valued opportunities for earning a modest living from peace action. Our observation that persisters manage their commitment by using effective organizing skills is supported by Nepstad and Smith (1996) in their study of recruitment to high-risk activism. They found the ability of activists to balance family and professional career responsibilities to be an influential determinant of their willingness to act on their intention to participate in peace actions when risks were high. Activist persistence, according to their study and ours, depends more on how skillful activists are at organizing multiple life responsibilities, than on being free of such demands, as had been suggested by previous research. Such creative management of responsibilities by our activists was possible in part because their family and friends were willing to 'take up the slack' so movement work could receive their fuller attention. Thus, commitment is not merely an act of individual will: It also has a deeply social character. Husbands, wives, children, and friends may all share the burden, such as assuming responsibilities the peace activist must neglect at home or work. At the very least, supporters must be willing to tolerate being neglected as the activist attends meetings, plans and carries out demonstrations, then retreats into solitude for renewal. Persisters managed the competing demands on their time in a climate where others offered support, helping their peace commitments survive. Managing burnout. To persevere, an activist must deal with burnout. Persisters were normally able to avoid it: They balanced action with reflection, diversified their activities, used creative outlets to relieve tension, withdrew into solitude or nature to regain their energy, found kindred spirits for mutual support, and developed long-term views of change in order to maintain their motivation. They refrained from working to the point of exhaustion, cared for personal needs as well as movement demands, and took time to play and create. Such efforts balanced the stresses and disappointments of peace work with activities that renewed their energy and spirit. Through this balancing act, burnout was avoided and their commitment was sustained. 6.3 The Persister as Beneficiary There is no selfless activism. Personal benefits from activism, some material and others not, help sustain an activist's commitment. Some of the same rewards motivating society beyond the movement operate within it as well: success, personal growth, career development. Success. Moral conviction and the pressing nature of a problem can keep peace activists going, even in the face of serious setbacks. Yet, there must be some personal rewards for persistence as well; at the very least, a perception that their action has made a difference. Perception of modest success is an important reward of social activism. For example, persisters could point to shifts in local public concern with nuclear war and radiation pollution as indicators of the modest success of Rocky Flats protest activity. Personal growth. While their small victories are important for keeping activists involved, they do find other rewards: The gratification of living in harmony with their nonviolence values; the appreciation of other movement members and supporters; observing other activists living the ethics of nonviolence among themselves and with opponents in the connnunity; watching the members of their peace group successfully arrive at a consensus and preserve a feeling of community; learning how to better communicate and organize; and experiencing a more meaningful personal life. Such intangible rewards seemed to fulfill the personal ambition of most persisters, guided as they were by a broader view of change: Of becoming more peaceful and effective people who were living an integrated, nonviolent life while contributing to the creation of a more just and peaceful world. Seen in this light, persistent activists may join social movements in order to change society or solve global problems but, in the process, they may also change themselves, thereby creating the possibility for a new kind of community. Our results concur with those of Knudson-Ptacek (1990:233-245). She learned that peace activists found fulfillment and success through their relationships to others and saw their personal development evolve as their orientation shifted from selfish interests toward the welfare of the collective. Their growing sense of interdependence reinforced their belief that they were in part responsible for causing global problems and for solving them together. That activist interdependence had four bases: The spiritual, a unified view of life offering meaning and direction; the political, an understanding of political processes; the relational, friendship patterns providing bonding and personal commitment to others; and the defensive, banding together for protection. The testimony of our persisters supports this line of thinking. They spoke about these four connections in relation to their commitment to serving the world community, which they felt was their larger obligation. Careers. Many of our persisters developed 'ethical careers'. Yet, while they were entrepreneurial in the sense that many created work for themselves in the movement, that work was rarely remunerative. A few had modestly paid positions with peace organizations, but most persisted not because they could make a living from peace activism, but out of a sense of mission. Our persisters resembled in some respects veterans of the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign for southern black voter registration (McAdam, 1989). Several had begun their activism in the civil rights movement. Many were working in education and the helping professions, with incomes lower than their high educational achievement would lead one to predict. Support from their extended social networks appeared to be more substantial than support they received from their movement organizations. Many moved from their initial step into activism as a moral stand, to peace work as a vocation within a growing web of personal and organizational supports. Career activism involved more profound life change for some of our persisters than for others. There were two broadly-defined groups: Those who reshaped their lives around their activism and those for whom movement work involved no major life change. These two paths illustrate Travisaro's distinction between conversion and alternation in social movement participation. Some participants' lives are transformed by total commitment to the cause. They become completely absorbed in the movement. Others are able to 'commute' between the movement world and their conventional lives (Travisaro, 1981:237-248). 6.4 The Persister as Creator The activists we have come to know through our study persist in large part because they are creative in their activism. They have learned entrepreneurship, to innovate, to do their work with many fewer resources than are available in the conventional world of work. Living 'life on the edge', integrating personal and movement life, devising workable strategy and tactics for keeping ahead of the opponent, seeing and exploiting a personal opportunity structure--all have required that the persister become an imaginative and inventive person. The history of nonviolent action would support the argument that, lacking the capacity or willingness to resist violence and militarism by physical force, activists must be infinitely more creative than their adversaries (Ackerman & Kruegler, 1994; Powers & Vogele, 1997). Our research suggests that persistent activists are not only rational in selecting a course of action, as resource mobilization theorists claim, but they are also imaginative in identifying, mobilizing and combining their resources to pursue it. Their creativity is reflected in the daily decisions they make in fashioning their lives, preventing burnout, designing and implementing projects, and even crafting their performance in court after civil disobedience actions. Awareness of this activist creativity is essential for understanding how their commitments develop and survive. This 'creative action' is a resource mobilized by the activist and collective action researchers should give it more attention. Creativity is related to rationality, but it has unique features: It is the process of rationally exploring options beyond conventional ways of thinking and organizing. It draws on imagination and thrives on novelty and risk-taking. It is characterized by innovation, a process where people deal with changing conditions, develop new opportunities, and invent novel programs. This creativity is at the heart of persistent pacifism. 7. Factors that Sustain Commitment Persisters' commitment was sustained to the extent that they: - Preserved their activist identity and a strong sense of personal responsibility to work for peace and social justice in the world. - Cultivated personal opportunities for peace action. - Perceived the urgency and effectiveness of peace action. _ Remained bonded to peace movement principles, and to their movement organizations, leaders, and communities. _ Managed support and criticism from inside and outside the movement. _ Effectively managed their competing responsibilities. _ Successfully integrated peace action into their everyday lives. _ Developed a strategy for managing burnout. _ Received the rewards of activism in the form of new skills and personal growth. _ Shared the peace vision with other activists, including a long-term view of change. Although each of these factors made its unique contribution to activist persistence, a few seemed crucial: Having an activist identity, including a strong sense of personal responsibility to work for peace and social justice; believing that peace work was urgent; feeling bonded to the peace movement; managing competing responsibilities; integrating peace work into daily life; and developing a strategy for managing burnout. This shows, in line with Lichbach's ideas about the mix of solutions to the Rebel's Dilemma, how different social factors combine to ensure longterm activism. 8. Conclusion We have brought together the many elements of our activists' accounts into a model of sustained commitment (Figure 1). This model reveals the various socialization influences on the formation of beliefs which make people more attitudinally available for activism. It also identifies life pattern as the primary determinant of their situational availability, giving them the time and energy to act on their beliefs. Once available to the movement, their joining is contingent on opportunity. When peace groups and action targets are nearby and plentiful, one who is fully available will be more likely to become involved. Once activists are in the movement, a number of influences sustain their commitment. Some of these our preliminary research had prepared us to find: The belief in the urgency and effectiveness of peace action, which gives it meaning; the development of an activist identity rooted in the ethic of helping others and feeling personally responsible to act for change; bonding to a peace group's ideology, organization, leadership and community; continually clarifying the movement's vision and its long-term view of change. We had not anticipated other influences, however. Those had to do with the persister as manager and creator. Much of their persistence appeared to flow from their ability to manage their commitment to the movement. They gained support from significant others and handled criticism in creative ways; balanced their competing responsibilities so activism was possible; integrated peace work into their daily lives; cultivated opportunity so they could be involved in actions that mattered to them; developed creative strategies for managing burnout; and received rewards from their activism in the form of personal growth which also kept them involved. Persisters appeared to be consummate managers of their lives in support of their continued activism. The activist's role as creator seemed equally influential in sustaining commitment. The persister's 'creative urge', one might call it, and the ability to fulfill it through activism seemed particularly salient. Opportunity for action, for instance, must be continually cultivated by activists, either by responding to projects of others or by creating their own. Their full exploitation of this 'action opportunity structure' permits them to meet this need for creative engagement. Likewise, the challenge of creating a personal life that integrates their peace values and work with the requirements of everyday living is an act of creation that sustains commitment. Finally, growing personally is recreating oneself from movement work through new skills and a more nonviolent temperament. Our persisters also demonstrated their creative attention to the care and reinvention of their organizations. For example, persisters at the Rocky Mountain Peace Center replaced an ineffective board-staff structure for making decisions with an imaginative 'spokescouncil' to better apply their core peace values in making and h-nplementing decisions. The same organization arranged its program more rationally around issue-based communities. The absence of such creative efforts by activists to maintain organizational vitality was a major reason for the rapid decline of the Nuclear Freeze movement in the 1980s (Solo, 1988). Just as important as imagination in personal and organizational life is the persister's pursuit of creative and flexible strategies against the targets of the movement. Without innovative strategies, opponents quickly learn to anticipate the activists' actions and preempt or neutralize them, thus eliminating the modest successes our persisters have said were important for sustaining their commitment. Outwitting one's opponent, especially locating the chinks in the armor of the state, is a direct challenge to the persister's creative urge.' We saw how important this was in the 1997 strategic and tactical inventiveness of the Serbian democracy movement actions in Belgrade and elsewhere. Within our model, microcontextual processes--the bonding, the sense of urgency and common vision, the personal growth, the management, the creativity--seem to increase the likelihood of a sustained activist commitment. They operate within and in turn influence the macromobilization context where larger political events and policies help set the local activist agenda. 8.1 Study Contributions The results of our study have theoretical and practical value. They partially validate and expand each of the three major theories of social movement development. They clarify the significant influence of belief that collective behavior theorists have identified as the key stimulus of participation in social movements. They strengthen the argument of New Social Movements theorists that culture, context, collective identity and social networks are instrumental in the formation and preservation of social movements. Finally, the accounts of our persisters offer support for the resource mobilization view of social movements as the rational pursuit of solutions to public grievances that have been neglected by institutional politics. What our study revealed about pacifist persisters from the 1970s and 1980s serves to illuminate what researchers learned about peace movement changes in the USA during that period: The movement's surge and slump dynamics with the lasting effect of expansion; its institutionalization in some sectors that made it less episodic; the broadening of its goals that brought it into common cause with other nonviolent movements.' These movement developments supported pacifist persistence and, in turn, were reinforced by persisters who were creative in managing their commitments and determined to live with integrity from their pacifist beliefs. It is such hardcore persisters who foster and maintain the vigor and effectiveness of the movement. Thus, activist persistence seems important for peace scholars to study. On the practical side, knowledge of what leads to that persistence could increase the movement's effectiveness and expansion. Our findings revealed two types of activist capacities that are important for peace movement organizations: Life management skills and creativity. Since these qualities are essential for success in all human endeavors, we should not be surprised to discover their importance for sustaining activism. Creativity is especially important because that quality has been largely neglected in the study of social movements and peace action. Given the prominence of 'creative action' that we discovered in the lives of activists and the work of their organizations, it should be of major concern for future studies of persistent activism. Attention to that creative element could ultimately enhance movement effectiveness. Cultivating the creativity and life management skills of activists could serve to offset the serious power disadvantage that normally constrains challenge groups. The peace movement may now be coalescing with movements for human rights, democracy, civic development, and environmental protection into a transnational metamovement against violence.' If so, knowing how to encourage activist conunitinent would be essential for building a strong and lasting coalition. In that event, creativity and other factors that keep members in the movement could be of particular interest to activists and scholars alike. Our model of sustained commitment is a step toward understanding why people become active in peace work and how they maintain their commitment to it. We are hoping that others will refme and expand our model by conducting similar studies in other parts of the world. Such studies of persistence should be of special interest to peace scholars and to movement organizations with their constant challenge of attracting and retaining members. 24 NOTES 1. For a thorough treatment of the three groups--persisters, shifters and dropouts--see Downton & Wehr (1997). 2. Availability and opportunity are concepts explored in Downton (1973, 1979, 1980). 3. Becker (1960) abandoned the then prevailing view of commitment as a subjective state of mind in favor of a behavioral definition of the concept as 'a consistent line of action'. 4. Our thinking in this article is based, in part, on our earlier theoretical work of peace commitment as a process of bonding to leadership, ideology, organizations, rituals, and friendship groups (Downton & Wehr, 1991). 5. Inventiveness and tactical imagination in the Italian peace movement are explored by Ruzza (1992). 6. 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